By ROMAIN ROLLAND 




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TOLSTOY 



BY 

ROMAIN ROLLAND 

AUTHOR OF "JEAN CHRISTOPHE" 



TRANSLATED BY 

BERNARD MIALL 




NEW YORK 

EP BUTTON & COMPANY 
31 West Twenty-Third Street 



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Copyright, 191 1 
By E. P. Dutton & Company 



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TOLSTOY 



PREFACE 

To those of my own generation, the light that 
has but lately failed was the purest that illu- 
mined their youth. In the gloomy twilight 
of the later nineteenth century it shone as a 
star of consolation, whose radiance attracted 
and appeased our awakening spirits. As one 
of the many — for there are many in France — 
to whom Tolstoy was very much more than 
an admired artist: for whom he was a friend, 
the best of friends, the one true friend in the 
whole European art — I wish to lay before this 
sacred memory my tribute of gratitude and of 
love. 

The days when I learned to know him are 
days that I shall never forget. It was in 1886. 
After some years of silent germination the 
marvellous flowers of Russian art began to 
blossom on the soil of France. Translations 
of Tolstoy and of Dostoyevsky were being is- 



2 PREFACE 

sued in feverish haste by all the publishing- 
houses of Paris. Between the years '85 and 
'87 came War and Peace, Anna Karenin, 
Childhood and Youth, Polikushka, The Death 
of Ivan Ilyitch, the novels of the Caucasus, 
and the Tales for the People. In the space 
of a few months, almost of a few weeks, there 
was revealed to our eager eyes the present- 
ment of a vast, unfamiliar life, in which was 
reflected a new people, a new world. 

I had but newly entered the Normal Col- 
lege. My fellow-scholars were of widely di- 
vergent opinions. In our little world were 
such realistic and ironical spirits as the phi- 
losopher Georges Dumas; poets, like Suares, 
burning with love of the Italian Renaissance; 
faithful disciples of classic tradition; Stend- 
halians, Wagnerians, atheists and mystics. It 
was a world of plentiful discussion, plentiful 
disagreement; but for a period of some 
months we were nearly all united by a com- 
mon love of Tolstoy. It is true that each 
loved him for different reasons, for each dis- 
covered in him himself; but this love was a 
love that opened the door to a revelation of 



PREFACE 3 

life; to the wide world itself. On every side 
— in our families, in our country homes — this 
mighty voice, which spoke from the confines 
of Europe, awakened the same emotions, un- 
expected as they often were. I remember 
my amazement upon hearing some middle- 
class people of Nivernais, my native province 
— people who felt no interest whatever in art, 
people who read practically nothing — speak 
with the most intense feeling of The Death of 
Ivan Ilyitch. 

I have read, in the writings of distinguished 
critics, the theory that Tolstoy owed the best 
of his ideas to the French romantics: to 
George Sand, to Victor Hugo. We may 
ignore the absurdity of supposing that 
Tolstoy, who could not endure her, could ever 
have been subject to the influence of George 
Sand; but we cannot deny the influence of 
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and of Stendhal; 
nevertheless, we belittle the greatness of 
Tolstoy, and the power of his fascination, if 
we attribute to them his ideas. The circle of 
ideas in which art moves and has its being 
is a narrow one. It is not in those ideas that 



4 PREFACE 

his might resides, but in his expression of 
them; in the personal accent, the imprint of 
the artist, the colour and savour of his life. 

Whether Tolstoy's ideas were or were not 
borrowed — a matter to be presently con- 
sidered — never yet had a voice like to his re- 
sounded throughout Europe. How else can 
we explain the thrill of emotion which we all 
of us felt upon hearing that psychic music, 
that harmony for which we had so long 
waited, and of which we felt the need? In 
our opinion the style counted for nothing. 
Most of us, myself included, made the ac- 
quaintance of Melchior de Vogue's work on 
the subject of the Russian novel * after we 
had read the novels of Tolstoy; and his ad- 
miration of our hero seemed, after ours, a 
pallid thing. M. de Vogue spoke essentially 
as a man of letters pure and simple. But for 
our part it was not enough to admire the pre- 
sentation of life: we lived it; it was our own. 
Ours it was by its ardent love of life, by its 
quality of youth; ours by its irony, its dis- 
illusion, its pitiless discernment, and its haunt- 
1 Le Roman Russe. 



PREFACE 5 

ing sense of mortality. Ours by its dreams 
of brotherly love, of peace among men ; ours 
by its terrible accusation of the lies of civilisa- 
tion ; ours by its realism ; by its mysticism ours ; 
by its savour of nature, its sense of invisible 
forces, its vertigo in the face of the infinite. 

To many of us the novels of Tolstoy were 
what Werther was to an earlier generation: 
the wonderful mirror of our passions, our 
strength, our weaknesses, of our hopes, our 
terrors, our discouragement. We were in no 
wise anxious to reconcile these many contra- 
dictions; still less did we concern ourselves to 
imprison this complex, multiple mind, full of 
echoes of the whole wide world, within the 
narrow limits of religious or political cate- 
gories, as have the greater number of those 
who have written of Tolstoy in these latter 
years: incapable of extricating themselves 
from the conflict of parties, dragging him into 
the arena of their own passions, measuring 
him by the standards of their socialistic or 
clerical coteries. As if our coteries could be 
the measure of a genius! What is it to me 
if Tolstoy is or is not of my party? Shall I 



6 PREFACE 

ask of what party Shakespeare was, or Dante, 
before I breathe the atmosphere of his magic 
or steep myself in its light? 

We did not say, as do the critics of to-day, 
that there were two Tolstoys: the Tolstoy of 
the period before the crisis and he of the 
period after the crisis; that the one was the 
great artist, while the other was not an artist 
at all. For us there was only one Tolstoy, and 
we loved the whole of him; for we felt, in- 
stinctively, that in such souls as his all things 
are bound together and each has its integral 
place. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface i 

CHAPTER 

I Childhood ... . . . u 

II Boyhood and Youth 23 

III Youth: The Army 35 

IV Early Work: Tales of the Causasus 41 
V Sebastopol: War and Religion . . 55 

VI St. Petersburg 71 

VII "Family Happiness" 89 

VIII Marriage 97 

IX "Anna Karenin" . . . . . . .117 

X The Crisis 133 

XI Reality 155 

XII Art and Conscience 167 

XIII Science in Art 181 

XIV Theories of Art: Music .... 207 

XV "Resurrection" 237 

7 



8 CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XVI Religion and Politics 251 

XVII Old Age 279 

XVIII Conclusion 305 



CHAPTER I 
CHILDHOOD 



TOLSTOY 

CHAPTER I 

CHILDHOOD 

OUR instinct was conscious then of that which 
reason must prove to-day. The task is pos- 
sible now, for the long life has attained its 
term ; revealing itself, unveiled, to the eyes of 
all, with unequalled candour, unexampled sin- 
cerity. To-day we are at once arrested by the 
degree in which that life has always remained 
the same, from the beginning to the end, in 
spite of all the barriers which critics have 
sought to erect here and there along its course ; 
in spite of Tolstoy himself, who, like every 
impassioned mind, was inclined to the belief, 
when he loved, or conceived a faith, that he 

loved or believed for the first time; that the 

11 



12 TOLSTOY 

commencement of his true life dated from 
that moment. Commencement — recommence- 
ment! How often his mind was the theatre 
of the same struggle, the same crises! We 
cannot speak of the unity of his ideas, for no 
such unity existed; we can only speak of the 
persistence among them of the same diverse 
elements; sometimes allied, sometimes inimi- 
cal; more often enemies than allies. Unity 
is to be found neither in the spirit nor the 
mind of a Tolstoy; it exists only in the internal 
conflict of his passions, in the tragedy of his 
art and his life. 

In him life and art are one. Never was 
work more intimately mingled with the 
artist's life; it has, almost constantly, the value 
of autobiography; it enables us to follow the 
writer, step by step, from the time when he 
was twenty-five years of age, throughout all 
the contradictory experiences of his adventur- 
ous career. His Journal, which he com- 
menced before the completion of his twentieth 
year, and continued until his death, 1 together 

1 With the exception of a few interruptions : one espe- 
cially of considerable length, between 1865 and 1878. 



CHILDHOOD 13 

with the notes furnished by M. Birukov, 2 com- 
pletes this knowledge, and enables us not only 
to read almost day by day in the history of 
Tolstoy's conscience, but also to reconstitute 
the world in which his genius struck root, and 
the minds from which his own drew suste- 
nance. 

His was a rich inheritance. The Tolstoys 
and the Volkonskys were very ancient families, 
of the greater nobility, claiming descent from 
Rurik, numbering among their ancestors com- 
panions of Peter the Great, generals of the 
Seven Years' War, heroes of the Napoleonic 
struggle, Decembrists, and political exiles. 
This inheritance included family traditions; 
old memories to which Tolstoy was indebted 
for some of the most original types in his War 
and Peace; there was the old Prince Bolkon- 
sky, his maternal grandfather, Voltairian, des- 
potic, a belated representative of the aristoc- 

2 For his remarkable biography of Leon Tolsto'i, Vie 
et CEuvre, Memoires, Souvenirs, Lettres, Extraits du 
Journal intime, Notes et Documents biographiques, reunis, 
coordonnes et annotes par P. Birukov, revised by Leo Tol- 
stoy, translated into French from the MS. by J. W. Bien- 
stock. 



14. TOLSTOY 

racy of the days of Catherine 11.; Prince 
Nikolas Grigorovitch Volkonsky, a cousin of 
his mother, who was wounded at Austerlitz, 
and, like Prince Andrei, was carried off the 
field of battle under the eyes of Napoleon; 
his father, who had some of the characteristics 
of Nicolas Rostoff, 3 and his mother, the Prin- 
cess Marie, the ugly, charming woman with 
the beautiful eyes, whose goodness illumines 
the pages of War and Peace. 

He scarcely knew his parents. Those de- 
lightful narratives, Childhood and Youth, 
have, therefore, but little authenticity; for the 
writer's mother died when he was not yet two 
years of age. He, therefore, was unable to 
recall the beloved face which the little Nikolas 
Irtenieff evoked beyond a veil of tears: a face 
with a luminous smile, which radiated glad- 
ness. . . . 

"Ah! if in difficult moments I could only 
see that smile, I should not know what sor- 
row is." 4 

3 He also fought in the Napoleonic campaigns, and was 
a prisoner in France during the years 1 8 14-15. 

4 Childhood, chap. ii. 



CHILDHOOD 15 

Yet she doubtless endowed him with her 
own absolute candour, her indifference to 
opinion, and her wonderful gift of relating 
tales of her own invention. 

His father he did in some degree remember. 
His was a genial yet ironical spirit; a sad- 
eyed man who dwelt upon his estates, leading 
an independent, unambitious life. Tolstoy 
was nine years old when he lost him. His 
death caused him "for the first time to under- 
stand the bitter truth, and filled his soul with 
despair." 5 Here was the child's earliest en- 
counter with the spectre of terror; and hence- 
forth a portion of his life was to be devoted 
to fighting the phantom, and a portion to its 
celebration, its transfiguration. The traces of 
this agony are marked by a few unforgettable 
touches in the final chapters of his Childhood, 
where his memories are transposed in the nar- 
rative of the death and burial of his mother. 

Five children were left orphans in the old 
house at Yasnaya Polyana. 6 There Leo 

8 Childhood, chap, xxvii. 

8 Yasnaya Polyana, the name of which signifies "the 
open glade" (literally, the "light glade"), is a little vil- 



16 TOLSTOY 

Nikolayevitch was born, on the 28th of Au- 
gust, 1828, and there, eighty-two years later, 
he was to die. The youngest of the five was 
a girl: that Marie who in later years became 
a religious ; it was with her that Tolstoy took 
refuge in dying, when he fled from home and 
family. Of the four sons, Sergius was charm- 
ing and selfish, "sincere to a degree that I have 
never known equalled"; Dmitri was passion- 
ate, self-centred, introspective, and in later 
years, as a student, abandoned himself eagerly 
to the practices of religion; caring nothing 
for public opinion; fasting, seeking out the 
poor, sheltering the infirm; suddenly, with 
the same quality of violence, plunging into 
debauchery; then, tormented by remorse, ran- 
soming a girl whom he had known in a public 
brothel, and receiving her into his home; 

lage to the south of Moscow, at a distance of some leagues 
from Toula, in one of the most thoroughly Russian of 
the provinces. "Here the two great regions of Russia," 
says M. Leroy-Beaulieu, "the region of the forests and 
the agricultural region, meet and melt into each other. 
In the surrounding country we meet with no Finns, 
Tatars, Poles, Jews, or Little Russians. The district of 
Toula lies at the very heart of Russia." 



CHILDHOOD 17 

finally dying of phthisis at the age of twenty- 
nine; 7 Nikolas, the eldest, the favourite 
brother, had inherited his mother's gift of im- 
agination, her power of telling stories ; 8 ironi- 
cal, nervous, and refined; in later years an 
officer in the Caucasus, where he formed the 
habit of a drunkard; a man, like his brother, 
full of Christian kindness, living in hovels, 
and sharing with the poor all that he possessed. 
Tourgenev said of him "that he put into prac- 
tice that humble attitude towards life which 
his brother Leo was content to develop in 
theory." 

The orphans were cared for by two great- 
hearted women, one was their Aunt Tatiana, 9 
of whom Tolstoy said that "she had two 
virtues: serenity and love." Her whole life 
was love; a devotion that never failed. "She 
made me understand the moral pleasure of 
loving." 

7 Tolstoy has depicted him in Anna Karenin, as the 
brother of Levine. 

8 He wrote the Diary of a Hunter. 

9 In reality she was a distant relative. She had loved 
Tolstoy's father, and was loved by him; but effaced her- 
self, like Sonia in War and Peace. 



18 TOLSTOY 

The other was their Aunt Alexandra, who 
was for ever serving others, herself avoiding 
service, dispensing with the help of servants. 
Her favourite occupation was reading the 
lives of the Saints, or conversing with pilgrims 
or the feeble-minded. Of these "innocents" 
there were several, men and women, who lived 
in the house. One, an old woman, a pilgrim, 
was the godmother of Tolstoy's sister. An- 
other, the idiot Gricha, knew only how to 
weep and pray. . ... 

" Gricha, notable Christian! So mighty 
was your faith that you felt the approach of 
God; so ardent was your love that words 
rushed from your lips, words that your reason 
could not control. And how you used to cele- 
brate His splendour, when speech failed you, 
when, all tears, you lay prostrated on the 
ground!" 10 

Who can fail to understand the influence, 
in the shaping of Tolstoy, of all these humble 
souls? In some of them we seem to see an 
outline, a prophecy, of the Tolstoy of later 
years. Their prayers and their affection must 

10 Childhood, chap. xii. 



CHILDHOOD 19 

have sown the seeds of faith in the child's 
mind; seeds of which the aged man was to 
reap the harvest. 

With the exception of the idiot Gricha, 
Tolstoy does not speak, in his narrative of 
Childhood, of these humble helpers who as- 
sisted in the work of building up his mind. 
But then how clearly we see it through the 
medium of the book — this soul of a little 
child; "this pure, loving heart, a ray of clear 
light, which always discovered in others the 
best of their qualities" — this more than com- 
mon tenderness! Being happy, he ponders on 
the only creature he knows to be unhappy; he 
cries at the thought, and longs to devote him- 
self to his good. He hugs and kisses an an- 
cient horse, begging his pardon, because he 
has hurt him. He is happy in loving, even 
if he is not loved. Already we can see the 
germs of his future genius; his imagination, 
so vivid that he cries over his own stories ; his 
brain, always busy, always trying to discover 
of what other people think; his precocious 
powers of memory 11 and observation; the at- 

11 He professes, in his autobiographical notes (dated 



W TOLSTOY 

tentive eyes, which even in the midst of his 
sorrow scrutinise the faces about him, and the 
authenticity of their sorrow. He tells us 
that at five years of age he felt for the first 
time "that life is not a time of amusement, but 
a very heavy task." 12 

Happily he forgot the discovery. In those 
days he used to soothe his mind with popular 
tales; those mythical and legendary dreams 
known in Russia as bylines; stories from the 
Bible; above all the sublime History of 
Joseph, which he cited in his old age as a 
model of narrative art: and, finally, the Ara- 
bian Nights, which at his grandmother's house 
were recited every evening, from the vantage 
of the window-seat^ by a blind story-teller. 

1878), to be able to recall the sensations of being swad- 
dled as a baby, and of being bathed in a tub. See First 
Memories. 

12 First Memories, 



CHAPTER II 

BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 



CHAPTER II 

BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 

He studied at Kazan. 1 He was not a notable 
student. It used to be said of the three 
brothers 2 : "Sergius wants to, and can ; Dmitri 
wants to, and can't; Leo can't and doesn't 
want to." 

He passed through the period which he 
terms "the desert of adolescence"; a desert 
of sterile sands, blown upon by gales of the 

1 From 1842 to 1847. [Science was as yet unorgan- 
ised; and its teachers, even in Western Europe, had not 
the courage of the facts they taught. Men still sought 
for an anchor in the philosophic systems of the ancients. 
The theory of evolution, put forward at the beginning of 
the century, had fallen into obscurity. Science was dry, 
dogmatic, uncoordinated, insignificant. Hence, perhaps, 
the contempt for science which distinguished Tolstoy 
throughout his life, and which made the later Tolstoy 
possible. — Trans.] 

2 Nikolas, five years older than Leo, had completed his 

studies in 1844. 

23 



24 TOLSTOY 

burning winds of folly. The pages of Boy- 
hood, and in especial those of Youth, 3 are 
rich in intimate confessions relating to these 
years. 

He was a solitary. His brain was in a con- 
dition of perpetual fever. For a year he was 
completely at sea; he roamed from one system 
of philosophy to another. As a Stoic, he in- 
dulged in self-inflicted physical tortures. As 
an Epicurean he debauched himself. Then 
came a faith in metempsychosis. Finally he 
fell into a condition of nihilism not far re- 
moved from insanity; he used to feel that if 
only he could turn round with sufficient 
rapidity he would find himself face to face 
with nothingness. . . . He analysed him- 
self continually: 

"I no longer thought of a thing; I thought 
of what I thought of it." 4 

This perpetual self-analysis, this mechan- 
ism of reason turning in the void, remained 
to him as a dangerous habit, which was 

3 The English translation is entitled Childhood, Boy- 
hood, Youth. 

4 Youth, chap. xix. 



BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 25 

"often," in his own words, " to be detrimental 
to me in life"; but by which his art has 
profited inexpressibly. 5 

As another result of self-analysis, he had 
lost all his religious convictions; or such was 
his belief. At sixteen years of age ceased to 
pray; he went to church no longer; 6 but his 
faith was not extinguished; it was only 
smouldering. 

"Nevertheless, I did believe — in some- 
thing. But in what? I could not say. I 
still believed in God; or rather I did not deny 
Him. But in what God? I did not know. 
Nor did I deny Christ and his teaching; but I 
could not have said precisely what that doc- 
trine was." 7 

From time to time he was obsessed by 
dreams of goodness. He wished to sell his 
carriage and give the money to the poor: to 
give them the tenth part of his fortune; to 

5 Notably in his first volumes — in the Tales of Sebas- 
topol. 

6 This was the time when he used to read Voltaire, 
and find pleasure in so doing. 

7 Confessions, vol. I. 



26 TOLSTOY 

live without the help of servants, "for they 
were men like himself." During an illness 8 
he wrote certain "Rules of Life." He 
naively assigned himself the duty of "study- 
ing everything, of mastering all subjects: law, 
medicine, languages, agriculture, history, 
geography, and mathematics; to attain the 
highest degree of perfection in music and 
painting," and so forth. He had "the con- 
viction that the destiny of man was a process 
of incessant self-perfection." 

Insensibly, under the stress of a boy's pas- 
sions, of a violent sensuality and a stupendous 
pride of self, 9 this faith in perfection went 
astray, losing its disinterested quality, be- 
coming material and practical. If he still 
wished to perfect his will, his body, and his 
mind, it was in order to conquer the world 

8 In March and April, 1847. 

9 "All that man does he does out of amour-propre" says 
Nekhludov, in Boyhood. 

In 1853 Tolstoy writes, in his Journal: "My great 
failing: pride. A vast self-love, without justification. 
. . . I am so ambitious that if I had to choose between 
glory and virtue (which I love) I am sure I should 
choose the former." 



BOYHOOD AND YOUTH W 

and to enforce its love. 10 He wished to please. 
To please : it was not an easy ambition. He 
was then of a simian ugliness: the face was 
long, heavy, brutish; the hair was cropped 
close, growing low upon the forehead; the 
eyes were small, with a hard, forbidding 
glance, deeply sunken in shadowy orbits; the 
nose was large, the lips were thick and pro- 
truding, and the ears were enormous. 11 Un- 
able to alter this ugliness, which even as a 
child had subjected him to fits of despair, 12 he 
pretended to a realisation of the ideal man of 
the world, Vhomme comme il faut. 1 * This 
ideal led him to do as did other "men of the 

10 "I wanted to be known by all, loved by all. I 
wanted every one, at the mere sound of my name, to be 
struck with admiration and gratitude." 

11 According to a portrait dated 1848, in which year he 
attained his twentieth year. 

12 "I thought there would be no happiness on earth for 
any one who had so large a nose, so thick lips, and such 
small eyes." 

13 "I divided humanity into three classes : the 'correct,' 
or 'smart,' who alone were worthy of esteem ; those who 
were not 'correct,' who deserved only contempt and 
hatred; and the people, the plebs, who simply did not ex- 
ist." {Youth, chap, xxxi.) 



28 TOLSTOY 

world": to gamble, run foolishly into debt, 
and to live a completely dissipated exist- 
ence. 14 

One quality always came to his salvation: 
his absolute sincerity. 

"Do you know why I like you better than 
the others?" says Nekhludov to his friend. 
"You have a precious and surprising quality: 
candour." 

"Yes, I am always saying things which I 
am ashamed to own even to myself." 15 

In his wildest moments he judges himself 
with a pitiless insight. 

"I am living an utterly bestial life," he 
writes in his Journal. "I am as low as one 
can fall." Then, with his mania for analysis, 
he notes minutely the causes of his errors: 

"i. Indecision or lack of energy. 2. Self- 
deception. 3. Insolence. 4. False modesty. 
5. Ill-temper. 6. Licentiousness. 7. Spirit 
of imitation. 8. Versatility. 9. Lack of re- 
flection." 

14 Especially during a period spent in St. Petersburg, 

1847-48. 

15 Boyhood. 



BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 29 

While still a student he was applying this 
independence of judgment to the criticism 
of social conventions and intellectual supersti- 
tions. He scoffed at the official science of the 
University; denied the least importance to 
historical studies, and was put under arrest 
for his audacity of thought. At this period 
he discovered Rousseau, reading his Confes- 
sions and Emile. The discovery affected him 
like a mental thunderbolt. 

"I made him an object of religious wor- 
ship. I wore a medallion portrait of him 
hung around my neck, as though it were a holy 
image." 16 

His first essays in philosophy took the form 
of commentaries on Rousseau (1846-47). 

In the end, however, disgusted with the Uni- 
versity and with "smartness," he returned to 
Yasnaya Polyana, to bury himself in the 
country (1847-51) ; where he once more came 
into touch with the people. He professed to 
come to their assistance, as their benefactor 
and their teacher. His experiences of this 

16 Conversations with M. Paul Boyer (Le Temps), 
August 28, 1 901. 



30 TOLSTOY 

period have been related in one of his earliest 
books, A Russian Proprietor (A Landlord's 
Morning) (1852) ; a remarkable novel, whose 
hero, Prince Nekhludov, 17 is Tolstoy in dis- 
guise. 

Nekhludov is twenty years old. He has left 
the University to devote himself to his peas- 
ants. He has been labouring for a year to do 
them good. In the course of a visit to the 
village, we see him striving against jeering 
indifference, rooted distrust, routine, apathy, 
vice, and ingratitude. All his efforts are in 
vain. He returns indoors discouraged, and 
muses on his dreams of a year ago; his gener- 
ous enthusiasm, his "idea that love and good- 
ness were one with happiness and truth: the 
only happiness and the only truth possible in 

17 Nekhludov figures also in Boyhood and Youth 
(1854), i n A Brush with the Enemy (1856) ; the Diary 
of a Sportsman (1856) ; Lucerne (1857) J an d Resurrec- 
tion (1899). We must remember that different charac- 
ters appear under this one name. Tolstoy has not always 
given Nekhludov the same physical aspect; and the latter 
commits suicide at the end of the Diary of a Sportsman. 
These different Nekhludovs are various aspects of Tolstoy, 
endowed with his worst and his best characteristics. 



BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 31 

this world." He feels himself defeated. He 
is weary and ashamed. 

"Seated before the piano, his hand uncon- 
sciously moved upon the keys. A chord 
sounded ; then a second, then a third. . . . 
He began to play. The chords were not al- 
ways perfect in rhythm; they were often ob- 
vious to the point of banality; they did not re- 
veal any talent for music; but they gave him 
a melancholy, indefinable sense of pleasure. 
At each change of key he awaited, with a flut- 
ter of the heart, for what was about to fol- 
low; his imagination vaguely supplementing 
the deficiencies of the actual sound. He 
heard a choir, an orchestra . . . and his 
keenest pleasure arose from the enforced ac- 
tivity of his imagination, which brought be- 
fore him, without logical connection, but with 
astonishing clearness, the most varied scenes 
and images of the past and the fu- 
ture. . . ." 

Once more he sees the moujiks — vicious, 
distrustful, lying, idle, obstinate, contrary, 
with whom he has lately been speaking; but 
this time he sees them with all their good 



32 TOLSTOY 

qualities and without their vices; he sees into 
their hearts with the intuition of love; he sees 
therein their patience, their resignation to the 
fate which is crushing them; their forgiveness 
of wrongs, their family affection, and the 
causes of their pious, mechanical attachment 
to the past. He recalls their days of honest 
labour, healthy and fatiguing. . . . 

" 'It is beautiful,' he murmurs . . . 
'Why am I not one of these?' " 18 

The entire Tolstoy is already contained in 
the hero of this first novel ; 19 his piercing vi- 
sion and his persistent illusions. He observes 
men and women with an impeccable realism ; 
but no sooner does he close his eyes than his 
dreams resume their sway; his dreams and his 
love of mankind. 

38 A Russian Proprietor. 

19 Contemporary with Childhood. 



CHAPTER III 

youth: the army 



CHAPTER III 
youth: the army 

TOLSTOY, in the year 1850, was not as patient 
as Nekhludov. Yasnaya Polyana had disillu- 
sioned and disappointed him. He was as 
weary of the people as he was of the world 
of fashion; his attitude as benefactor wearied 
him ; he could bear it no more. Moreover, he 
was harassed by creditors. In 1851 he es- 
caped to the Caucasus ; to the army in which 
his brother Nikolas was already an officer. 

He had hardly arrived, hardly tasted the 
quiet of the mountains, before he was once 
more master of himself; before he had re- 
covered his God. 

"Last night 1 I hardly slept. I began to 
pray to God. I cannot possibly express the 
sweetness of the feeling that came to me when 

1 The nth of June, 185 1, in the fortified camp of 
Stari-Iourt, in the Caucasus. 

35 



36 TOLSTOY 

I prayed. I recited the customary prayers; 
but I went on praying for a long time. I felt 
the desire of something very great, very beau- 
tiful. . . . What? I cannot say what. 
I wanted to be one with the Infinite Being: to 
be dissolved, comprehended, in Him. I 
begged Him to forgive me my trespasses. 
. . . But no, I did not beg Him ; I felt that 
He did pardon me, since He granted me that 
moment of wonderful joy. I was praying, yet 
at the same time I felt that I could not, dared 
not pray. I thanked Him, not in words, but 
in thought. . . . Scarcely an hour had 
passed, and I was listening to the voice of vice. 
I fell asleep dreaming of glory, of women: 
it was stronger than I. Never mind! I 
thank God for that moment of happiness: for 
showing me my pettiness and my greatness. 
I want to pray, but I do not know how ; I want 
to understand, but I dare not. I abandon my- 
self to Thy will!" 2 

The flesh was not conquered ; not then, nor 
ever; the struggle between God and the pas- 

2 Journal. 



YOUTH: THE ARMY S7 

sions of man continued in the silence of his 
heart. Tolstoy speaks in his Journal of the 
three demons which were devouring him: 

i. The passion for. gambling. Possible 
struggle. 

2. Sensuality. Struggle very difficult. 

3. Vanity. The most terrible of all. 

At the very moment when he was dreaming 
of living for others and of sacrificing himself, 
voluptuous or futile thoughts would assail 
him: the image of some Cossack woman, or 
"the despair he would feel if his moustache 
were higher on one side than the other." — 
"No matter!" God was there; He would not 
forsake him. Even the effervescence of the 
struggle was fruitful: all the forces of life 
were exalted thereby. 

"I think the idea of making a journey to 
the Caucasus, however frivolous at the time of 
conception, was inspired in me from above. 
God's hand has guided me. I never cease to 
thank Him. I feel that I have become better 
here; and I am firmly convinced that what- 
ever happens to me can only be for my good, 



38 TOLSTOY 

since it is God Himself who has wished 
it. . . ." 3 

It is the song of gratitude of the earth in 
spring. Earth covers herself with flowers ; all 
is well, all is beautiful. In 1852 the genius 
of Tolstoy produces its earliest flowers: 
Childhood, A Russian Proprietor, The In- 
vasion, Boyhood; and he thanks the Spirit of 
life who has made him fruitful. 4 

3 Letter to his Aunt Tatiana, January, 1852. 

4 A portrait dated 1851 already shows the change which 
is being accomplished in his mind. The head is raised; 
the expression is somewhat brighter; the cavities of the 
orbits are less in shadow; the eyes themselves still retain 
their fixed severity of look, and the open mouth, shadowed 
by a growing moustache, is gloomy and sullen; there is 
still a quality of defiant pride, but far more youth. 



CHAPTER IV 

EARLY WORK : TALES OF THE CAUCASUS 



CHAPTER IV 

EARLY WORK: TALES OF THE CAUCASUS 

The Story of my Childhood ! was commenced 
in the autumn of 1 85 1 , at Tiflis ; it was finished 
at Piatigorsk in the Caucasus, on the 2nd of 
July, 1852. It is curious to note that while in 
the midst of that nature by which he was so 
intoxicated, while leading a life absolutely 
novel, in the midst of the stirring risks of war- 
fare, occupied in the discovery of a world of 
unfamiliar characters and passions, Tolstoy 
should have returned, in this his first work, to 
the memories of his past life. But Child- 
hood was written during a period of illness, 
when his military activity was suddenly ar- 
rested. During the long leisure of a conva- 
lescence, while alone and suffering, his state of 
mind inclined to the sentimental; 2 the past 

1 Published in English as part of Childhood, Boyhood, 
Youth. 

2 His letters of this period to his Aunt Tatiana are full 

41 



43 TOLSTOY 

unrolled itself before his eyes at a time when 
he felt for it a certain tenderness. After the 
exhausting tension of the last few unprofit- 
able years, it was comforting to live again in 
thought the "marvellous, innocent, joyous, 
poetic period" of early childhood; to recon- 
struct for himself "the heart of a child, good, 
sensitive, and capable of love." With the ar- 
dour of youth and its illimitable projects, with 
the cyclic character of his poetic imagination, 
which rarely conceived an isolated subject, 
and whose great romances are only the links 
in a long historic chain, the fragments of enor- 
mous conceptions which he was never able to 
execute, 3 Tolstoy at this moment regarded hi* 
narrative of Childhood as merely the opening 
chapters of a History of Four Periods, which 

of tears and of sentimentality. He was, as he says, Liova- 
riova, "Leo the Sniveller" (January 6, 1852). 

3 A Russian Proprietor {A Landlord's Morning) is 
the fragment of a projected Romance of a Russian Land- 
owner. The Cossacks forms the first portion of a great 
romance of the Caucasus. In the author's eyes the huge 
War and Peace was only a sort of preface to a contem- 
porary epic, of which The Decembrists was to have been 
the nucleus. 



EARLY WORK 4S 

was to include his life in the Caucasus, and 
was in all probability to have terminated in 
the revelation of God by Nature. 

In later years Tolstoy spoke with great se- 
verity of his Childhood, to which he owed 
some part of his popularity. 

"It is so bad," he remarked to M. Birukov: 
" it is written with so little literary conscience! 
. . . There is nothing to be got from it." 

He was alone in this opinion. The manu- 
script was sent, without the author's name, to 
the great Russian review, the Sovremennik 
(Contemporary) ; it was published immedi- 
ately (September 6, 1852), and achieved a 
general success; a success confirmed by the 
public of every country in Europe. Yet in 
spite of its poetic charm, its delicacy of touch 
and emotion, we can understand that it may 
have displeased the Tolstoy of later years. 

It displeased him for the very reasons by 
which it pleased others. We must admit it 
frankly: except in the recording of certain 
provincial types, and in a restricted number 
of passages which are remarkable for their re- 
ligious feeling or for the realistic treatment of 



44 TOLSTOY 

emotion, 4 the personality of Tolstoy is barely 
in evidence. 

A tender, gentle sentimentality prevails 
from cover to cover; a quality which was al- 
ways afterwards antipathetic to Tolstoy, and 
one which he sedulously excluded from his 
other romances. We recognise it; these tears, 
this sentimentality came from Dickens, who 
was one of Tolstoy's favourite authors between 
his fourteenth and his twenty-first year. Tol- 
stoy notes in his Journal: "Dickens: David 
Copperfield. Influence considerable." He 
read the book again in the Caucasus. 

Two other influences, to which he himself 
confesses, were Sterne and Toppfer. "I was 
then," he says, "under their inspiration." 5 

Who would have thought that the Nouvel- 
les Genevoises would be the first model of the 
author of War and Peace? Yet knowing this 
to be a fact, we discern in Tolstoy's Childhood 
the same bantering, affected geniality, trans- 
planted to the soil of a more aristocratic na- 

4 See the passage relating to the pilgrim Gricha, or to 
the death of his mother. 

5 Letter to Birukov. 



EARLY WORK 45 

ture. So we see that the readers of his earliest 
efforts found the writer's countenance familiar. 
It was not long, however, before his own per- 
sonality found self-expression. His Boy- 
hood (Adolescence), though less pure and 
less perfect than Childhood exhibits a more 
orignal power of psychology, a keen feeling 
for nature, and a mind full of distress and 
conflict, which Dickens or Toppfer would 
have been at a loss to express. In A Russian 
Proprietor (October, 1852 6 ) Tolstoy's char- 
acter appeared sharply defined, marked by his 
fearless sincerity and his faith in love. 
Among the remarkable portraits of peasants 
which he has painted in this novel, we find 
an early sketch of one of the finest conceptions 
of his Popular Tales: the old man with the 
beehives; 7 the little old man under the birch- 
tree, his hands outstretched, his eyes raised, 
his bald head shining in the sun, and all 
around him the bees, touched with gold, never 
stinging him, forming a halo. . . . But 
the truly typical works of this period are those 

6 Completed only in 1855-56. 

7 The Two Old Men (1885). 



46 TOLSTOY 

which directly register his present emotions: 
namely, the novels of the Caucasus. The first, 
The Invasion (finished in December, 1852), 
impresses the reader deeply by the magnifi- 
cence of its landscapes: a sunrise amidst the 
mountains, on the bank of a river; a won- 
derful night-piece, with sounds and shadows 
noted with a striking intensity; and the return 
in the evening, while the distant snowy peaks 
disappear in the violet haze, and the clear 
voices of the regimental singers rise and fall 
in the transparent air. Many of the types of 
War and Peace are here drawn to the life: 
Captain Khlopoff, the true hero, who by no 
means fights because he likes fighting, but 
because it is his duty; a man with "one of 
those truly Russian faces, placid and simple, 
and eyes into which it is easy and agreeable to 
gaze." 

Heavy, awkward, a trifle ridiculous, indif- 
ferent to his surroundings, he alone is un- 
changed in battle, where all the rest are 
changed; "he is exactly as we have seen him 
always: with the same quiet movements, the 
same level voice, the same expression of sim- 



EARLY WORK 4tf 

plicity on his heavy, simple face.". Next 
comes the lieutenant who imitates the heroes 
of Lermontov; a most kindly, affectionate 
boy, who professes the utmost ferocity. Then 
comes the poor little subaltern, delighted at 
the idea of his first action, brimming over with 
affection, ready to fall on his comrade's 
neck; a laughable, adorable boy, who, like 
Petia RostorT, contrives to get stupidly killed. 
In the centre of the picture is the figure of 
Tolstoy, the observer, who is mentally aloof 
from his comrades, and already utters his cry 
of protest against warfare: 

"Is it impossible, then, for men to live in 
peace, in this world so full of beauty, under 
this immeasurable starry sky? How is it 
they are able, here, to retain their feelings of 
hostility and vengeance, and the lust of de- 
stroying their fellows? All there is of evil in 
the human heart ought to disappear at the 
touch of nature, that most immediate expres- 
sion of the beautiful and the good." 8 

Other tales of the Caucasus were to follow 
which were observed at this time, though not 

8 The Invasion. 



48 TOLSTOY 

written until a later period. In 1854-55, 
The Woodcutters was written; a book notable 
for its exact and rather frigid realism; full of 
curious records of Russian soldier-psychology 
— notes to be made use of in the future. In 
1856 appeared A Brush with the Enemy, in 
which there is a man of the world, a degraded 
non-commissioned officer, a wreck, a coward, 
a drunkard and a liar, who cannot support the 
idea of being slaughtered like one of the com- 
mon soldiers he despises, the least of whom is 
worth a hundred of himself. 

Above all these works, as the summit, so to 
speak, of this first mountain range, rises one of 
the most beautiful lyric romances that ever fell 
from Tolstoy's pen : the song of his youth, the 
poem of the Caucasus, The Cossacks. 9 The 
splendour of the snowy mountains displaying 
their noble lines against the luminous sky fills 
the whole work with its music. The book is 
unique, for it belongs to the flowering-time of 
genius, "the omnipotent god of youth," as 

9 Although completed much later — in i860 — and ap- 
pearing only in 1863 — the bulk of this volume was of this 
period. 



EARLY WORK 49 

Tolstoy says, "that rapture which never re- 
turns." What a spring-tide torrent! What 
an overflow of love! 

" 'I love — I love so much! . . . How 
brave! How good!' he repeated: and he felt 
as though he must weep. Why? Who was 
brave, and whom did he love? That he did 
not precisely know." 10 

This intoxication of the heart flows on, un- 
checked. Olenin, the hero, who has come to 
the Caucasus, as Tolstoy came, to steep him- 
self in nature, in the life of adventure, be- 
comes enamoured of a young Cossack girl, 
and abandons himself to the medley of his 
contradictory aspirations. At one moment he 
believes that "happiness is to live for others, 
to sacrifice oneself," at another, that "self- 
sacrifice is only stupidity"; finally he is in- 
clined to believe, with Erochta, the old Cos- 
sack, that "everything is precious. God has 
made everything for the delight of man. 
Nothing is a sin. To amuse oneself with a 
handsome girl is not a sin: it is only health." 
But what need to think at all? It is enough 

10 The Cossacks. 



50 TOLSTOY 

to live. Life is all good, all happiness; life 
is all-powerful and universal; life is God. 
An ardent naturalism uplifts and consumes his 
soul. Lost in the forest, amidst "the wild- 
ness of the woods, the multitude of birds and 
animals, the clouds of midges in the dusky 
green, in the warm, fragrant air, amidst the 
little runlets of water which trickle every- 
where beneath the boughs" ; a few paces from 
the ambushes of the enemy, Olenin is "seized 
suddenly by such a sense of causeless happi- 
ness that in obedience to childish habit he 
crossed himself and began to give thanks to 
somebody." Like a Hindu fakir, he rejoices 
to tell himself that he is alone and lost in this 
maelstrom of aspiring life: that myriads of 
invisible beings, hidden on every hand, are 
that moment hunting him to death ; that these 
thousands of little insects humming around 
him are calling: 

" 'Here, brothers, here! Here is some one 
to biteT " 

And it became obvious to him that he was 
no longer a Russian gentleman, in Moscow 



EARLY WORK 51 

society, but simply a creature like the midge, 
the pheasant, the stag: like those which were 
living and prowling about him at that mo- 
ment. 

"Like. them, I shall live, I shall die. And 
the grass will grow above me. . . ." 

And his heart is full of happiness. 

Tolstoy lives through this hour of youth in 
a delirium of vitality and the love of life. 
He embraces Nature, and sinks himself in her 
being. To her he pours forth and exalts his 
griefs, his joys, and his loves; in her he lulls 
them to sleep. Yet this romantic intoxica- 
tion never veils the lucidity of his perceptions. 
Nowhere has he painted landscape with a 
greater power than in this fervent poem; no- 
where has he depicted the type with greater 
truth. The contrast of nature with the world 
of men, which forms the basis of the book; 
and which through all Tolstoy's life is to 
prove one of his favourite themes, and an 
article of his Credo, has already inspired him, 
the better to castigate the world, with some- 
thing of the bitterness to be heard in the 



52 TOLSTOY 

Kreutzer Sonata. 11 But for those who love 
him he is no less truly himself; and the crea- 
tures of nature, the beautiful Cossack girl and 
her friends, are seen under a searching light, 
with their egoism, their cupidity, their 
venality, and all their vices. 

An exceptional occasion was about to offer 
itself for the exercise of this heroic veracity. 

11 For example, see Olenin's letter to his friends in 
Russia. 



CHAPTER V 

sebastopol: war and religion 



CHAPTER V 

SEBASTOPOL: WAR AND RELIGION 

In November, 1853, war was declared upon 
Turkey. Tolstoy obtained an appointment to 
the army of Roumania ; he was transferred to 
the army of the Crimea, and on November 7, 
1854, ne arrived in Sebastopol. He was burn- 
ing with enthusiasm and patriotic faith. He 
went about his duties courageously, and was 
often in danger, in especial throughout the 
April and May of 1855, when he served on 
every alternate day in the battery of the 4th 
bastion. 

Living for months in a perpetual tremor 
and exaltation, face to face with death, his 
religious mysticism revived. He became fa- 
miliar with God. In April, 1855, he noted in 
his diary a prayer to God, thanking Him for 
His protection in danger and beseeching Him 

to continue it, "so that I may achieve the 

55 



56 TOLSTOY 

glorious and eternal end of life, of which I am 
still ignorant, although I feel a presentiment 
of it." Already this object of his life was not 
art, but religion. On March 5, 1855, he 
wrote : 

"I have been led to conceive a great idea, 
to whose realisation I feel capable of devot- 
ing my whole life. This idea is the founda- 
tion of a new religion; the religion of the 
Christ, but purified of dogmas and mysteries. 
. . . To act with a clear conscience, in 
order to unite men by means of religion." 1 

This was to be the programme of his old 
age. 

However, to distract himself from the 
spectacles which surrounded him, he began 
once more to write. How could he, amidst 
that hail of lead, find the necessary freedom 
of mind for the writing of the third part of 
his memories: Youth? The book is chaotic; 
and we may attribute to the conditions of its 
production a quality of disorder, and at times 
a certain dryness of abstract analysis, which is 
increased by divisions and subdivisions after 
1 Journal, 



SEBASTOPOL: WAR AND RELIGION 57 

the manner of Stendhal. 2 Yet we admire his 
calm penetration of the mist of dreams and in- 
choate ideas which crowd a young brain. 
His work is extraordinarily true to itself, and 
at moments what poetic freshness! — as in the 
vivid picture of springtime in the city, or 
the tale of the confession, and the journey to 
the convent, on account of the forgotten sin! 
An impassioned pantheism lends to certain 
pages a lyric beauty, whose accents recall the 
tales of the Caucasus. For example, this de- 
scription of an evening in the spring: 

"The calm splendour of the shining 
crescent; the gleaming fish-pond; the ancient 
birch-trees, whose long-tressed boughs were on 
one side silvered by the moonlight, while on 
the other they covered the path and the bushes 

2 We notice this manner also in The Woodcutters, 
which was completed at the same period. For example: 
"There are three kinds of love: I. aesthetic love; 2. de- 
voted love; 3. active love," etc. (Youth). "There are 
three kinds of soldiers: I. the docile and subordinate; 
2. the authoritative; 3. the boasters — who themselves are 
subdivided into: (a) The docile who are cool and 
lethargic; (b) those who are earnestly docile; (c) docile 
soldiers who drink," etc. (The Woodcutters). 



58 TOLSTOY 

with their black shadows; the cry of a quail 
beyond the pond; the barely perceptible 
sound of two ancient trees which grazed one 
another; the humming of the mosquitoes; the 
fall of an apple on the dry leaves; and the 
frogs leaping up to the steps of the terrace, 
their backs gleaming greenish under a ray of 
moonlight. . . . The moon is mounting; 
suspended in the limpid sky, she fills all space 
with her light; the splendour of the moonlit 
water grows yet more brilliant, the shadows 
grow blacker, the light more transparent. 
. . . And to me, an obscure and earthly 
creature, already soiled with every human 
passion, but endowed with all the stupendous 
power of love, it seemed at that moment that 
all nature, the moon, and I myself were one 
and the same." 3 

But the present reality, potent and imperi- 
ous, spoke more loudly than the dreams of the 
past. Youth remained unfinished; and Cap- 
tain Count Tolstoy, behind the plating of his 
bastion, amid the rumbling of the bombard- 
ment, or in the midst of his company, observed 

3 Youth, chap, xxxii. 



SEBASTOPOL: WAR AND RELIGION 59 

the dying and the living, and recorded their 
miseries and his own, in his unforgettable nar- 
ratives of Sebastopol. 

These three narratives — Sebastopol in De- 
cember, 1854, Sebastopol in May, l855> ^ e ~ 
bastopol in August, 1855 — are generally con- 
founded with one another; but in reality they 
present many points of difference. The 
second in particular, in point both of feeling 
and of art, is greatly superior to the others. 
The others are dominated by patriotism; the 
second is charged with implacable truth. 

It is said that after reading the first nar- 
rative 4 the Tsarina wept, and the Tsar, moved 
by admiration, commanded that the story 
should be translated into French, and the 
author sent out of danger. We can readily 
believe it. Nothing in these pages but exalts 
warfare and the fatherland. Tolstoy had just 
arrived; his enthusiasm was intact; he was 
afloat on a tide of heroism. As yet he could 
see in the defenders of Sebastopol neither am- 
bition nor vanity, nor any unworthy feeling. 

4 Sent to the review Sovremennik and immediately pub- 
lished. 



60 TOLSTOY 

For him the war was a sublime epic ; its heroes 
were "worthy of Greece." On the other 
hand, these notes exhibit no effort of the im- 
agination, no attempt at objective represen- 
tation. The writer strolls through the city; 
he sees with the utmost lucidity, but relates 
what he sees in a form which is wanting 
in freedom: "You see . . . you enter 
. . . you notice. . . ." This is first- 
class reporting; rich in admirable impres- 
sions. 

Very different is the second scene : Sebasto- 
pol in May, 1835. In the opening lines we 
read: 

"Here the self-love, the vanity of thousands 
of human beings is in conflict, or appeased in 
death. . . ." 

And further on: 

"And as there were many men, so also were 
there many forms of vanity. . . . Vanity, 
vanity, everywhere vanity, even at the door of 
the tomb! It is the peculiar malady of our 
century. . . . Why do the Homers and 
Shakespeares speak of love, of glory, and of 
suffering, and why is the literature of our 



SEBASTOPOL: WAR AND RELIGION 61 

century nothing but the interminable history 
of snobs and egotists?" 

The narrative, which is no longer a simple 
narrative on the part of the author, but one 
which sets before us men and their passions, 
reveals that which is concealed by the mask of 
heroism. Tolstoy's clear, disillusioned gaze 
plumbs to the depths the hearts of his com- 
panions in arms; in them, as in himself, he 
reads pride, fear, and the comedy of those who 
continue to play at life though rubbing shoul- 
ders with death. Fear especially is avowed, 
stripped of its veils, and shown in all its 
nakedness. These nervous crises, 5 this ob- 
session of death, are analysed with a terrible 
sincerity that knows neither shame nor pity. 
It was at Sebastopol that Tolstoy learned to 
eschew sentimentalism, "that vague, feminine, 
whimpering passion," as he came disdain- 

5 Tolstoy refers to them again at a much later date, in 
his Conversations with his friend Teneromo. He tells 
him of a crisis of terror which assailed him one night 
when he was lying down in the "lodgement" dug out of 
the body of the rampart, under the protective plating. 
This Episode of the Siege of Sebastopol will be found in 
the volume entitled The Revolutionaries. 



62 TOLSTOY 

fully to term it; and his genius for analysis, 
the instinct for which awoke, as we saw, in 
the later years of his boyhood, and which was 
at times to assume a quality almost morbid, 6 
never attained to a more hypnotic and poig- 
nant intensity than in the narrative of the 
death of Praskhoukhin. Two whole pages 
are devoted to the description of all that 
passed in the mind of the unhappy man dur- 
ing the second following upon the fall of 
the shell, while the fuse was hissing towards 
explosion; and one page deals with all that 
passed before him after it exploded, when "he 
was killed on the spot by a fragment which 
struck him full in the chest." 

As in the intervals of a drama we hear the 
occasional music of the orchestra, so these 
scenes of battle are interrupted by wide 

6 Droujinine, a little later, wrote him a friendly letter 
in which he sought to put him on his guard against this 
danger: "You have a tendency to an excessive minute- 
ness of analysis ; it may become a serious fault. Some- 
times you seem on the point of saying that so-and-so's calf 
indicated a desire to travel in the Indies. . . . You 
must restrain this tendency: but do not for the world sup- 
press it." (Letter dated 1856 cited by P. Birukov.) 



SEBASTOPOL: WAR AND RELIGION 63 

glimpses of nature; deep perspectives of light; 
the symphony of the day dawning upon the 
splendid landscape, in the midst of which 
thousands are agonising. Tolstoy the Chris- 
tian, forgetting the patriotism of his first nar- 
rative, curses this impious war: 

"And these men, Christians, who profess the 
same great law of love and of sacrifice, do 
not, when they perceive what they have done, 
fall upon their knees repentant, before Him 
who in giving them life set w T ithin the heart 
of each, together with the fear of death, the 
love of the good and the beautiful. They do 
not embrace as brothers, with tears of joy and 
happiness!" 

As he was completing this novel — a work 
that has a quality of bitterness which, hitherto, 
none of his work had betrayed — Tolstoy w r as 
seized with doubt. Had he done wrong to 
speak? 

"A painful doubt assails me. Perhaps 
these things should not have been said. Per- 
haps what I am telling is one of those mis- 
chievous truths which, unconsciously hidden 
in the mind of each one of us, should not be 



64 TOLSTOY 

expressed lest they become harmful, like the 
lees that we must not stir lest we spoil the 
wine. If so, when is the expression of evil 
to be avoided? When is the expression of 
goodness to be imitated? Who is the male- 
factor and who is the hero? All are good 
and all are evil. . . ." 

But he proudly regains his poise: "The 
protagonist of my novel, whom I love with all 
the strength of my soul, whom I try to present 
in all her beauty, who always was, is, and shall 
be beautiful, is Truth." 

After reading these pages 7 Nekrasov, the 
editor of the review Sovremennik, wrote to 
Tolstoy: 

"That is precisely what Russian society 
needs to-day: the truth, the truth, of which, 
since the death of Gogol, so little has re- 
mained in Russian letters. . . . This 
truth which you bring to our art is something 
quite novel with us. I have only one fear: 
lest the times, and the cowardice of life, the 
deafness and dumbness of all that surrounds 
us, may make of you what it has made of 

7 Mutilated by the censor. 



SEBASTOPOL: WAR AND RELIGION 65 

most of us — lest it may kill the energy in 
you." 8 

Nothing of the kind was to be feared. The 
times, which waste the energies of ordinary 
men, only tempered those of Tolstoy. Yet 
for a moment the trials of his country and the 
capture of Sebastopol aroused a feeling of 
regret for his perhaps too unfeeling frankness, 
together with a feeling of sorrowful affec- 
tion. 

In his third narrative — Sebastopol in 
August, 1855 — while describing a group of 
officers playing cards and quarrelling, he in- 
terrupts himself to say: 

"But let us drop the curtain quickly over 
this picture. To-morrow — perhaps to-day — 
each of these men will go cheerfully to meet 
his death. In the depths of the soul of each 
there smoulders the spark of nobility which 
will make him a hero." 

Although this shame detracts in no wise 
from the forcefulness and realism of the nar- 
rative, the choice of characters shows plainly 
enough where lie the sympathies of the writer. 

8 September 2, 1855. 



66 TOLSTOY 

The epic of Malakoff and its heroic fall is 
told as affecting two rare and touching figures : 
two brothers, of whom the elder, Kozeltoff, 
has some of the characteristics of Tolstoy. 
Who can forget the younger, the ensign 
Volodya, timid and enthusiastic, with his 
feverish monologues, his dreams, his tears? — 
tears that rise to his eyes for a mere nothing; 
tears of tenderness, tears of humiliation — his 
fear during the first hours passed in the bastion 
(the poor boy is still afraid of the dark, and 
covers his head with his cloak when he goes 
to bed) ; the oppression caused by the feeling 
of his own solitude and the indifference of 
others; then, when the hour arrives, his joy 
in danger. He belongs to the group of poetic 
figures of youth (of whom are Petia in War 
and Peace, and the sub-lieutenant in The 
Invasion), who, their hearts full of affection, 
make war with laughter on their lips, and are 
broken suddenly, uncomprehending, on the 
wheel of death. The two brothers fall 
wounded, both on the same day — the last day 
of the defence. The novel ends with these 



SEBASTOPOL: WAR AND RELIGION 67 

lines, in which we hear the muttering of a 
patriotic anger: 

"The army was leaving the town ; and each 
soldier, as he looked upon deserted Sebastopol, 
sighed, with an inexpressible bitterness in his 
heart, and shook his fist in the direction of the 
enemy." 9 

9 In 1889, when writing a preface to Memories of Se- 
bastopol, by an Officer of Artillery (A. J. Erchofr), 
Tolstoy returned in fancy to these scenes. Every heroic 
memory had disappeared. He could no longer remember 
anything but the fear which lasted for seven months — 
the double fear: the fear of death and the fear of shame 
— and the horrible moral torture. All the exploits of the 
siege reduced themselves, for him, to this: he had been 
"flesh for cannon." 



CHAPTER VI 
ST. PETERSBURG 



CHAPTER VI 

ST. PETERSBURG 

WHEN, once issued from this hell, where for 
a year he had touched the extreme of the 
passions, vanities, and sorrows of humanity, 
Tolstoy found himself, in November, 1855, 
amidst the men of letters of St. Petersburg, 
they inspired him with a feeling of disdain 
and disillusion. They seemed to him en- 
tirely mean, ill-natured, and untruthful. 
These men, who appeared in the distance to 
wear the halo of art — even Tourgenev, whom 
he had admired, and to whom he had but 
lately dedicated The Woodcutters — even he, 
seen close at hand, had bitterly disappointed 
him. A portrait of 1856 represents him in 
the midst of them: Tourgenev, Gontcharov, 
Ostrovsky, Grigorovitch, Droujinine. He 
strikes one, in the free-and-easy atmosphere 
of the others, by reason of his hard, ascetic 
air, his bony head, his lined cheeks, his rigidly 

71 



72 TOLSTOY 

folded arms. Standing upright, in uniform, 
behind these men of letters, he has the ap- 
pearance, as Suares has wittily said, "rather 
of mounting guard over these gentry than of 
making one of their company; as though he 
were ready to march them back to gaol." 1 

Yet they all gathered about their young 
colleague, who came to them with the two- 
fold glory of the writer and the hero of 
Sebastopol. Tourgenev, who had "wept and 
shouted 'Hurrah!'" while reading the pages 
of Sebastopol, held out a brotherly hand. 
But the two men could not understand one 
another. Although both saw the world with 
the same clear vision, they mingled with that 
vision the hues of their inimical minds; the 
one, ironic, resonant, amorous, disillusioned, 
a devotee of beauty; the other proud, violent, 
tormented with moral ideas, pregnant with a 
hidden God. 

What Tolstoy could never forgive in these 
literary men was that they believed them- 

1 Suares: Tolstoi, edition of the Union pour V Action 
morale, 1899 (reprinted, in the Cahiers de la Quinzaine, 
under the title Tolstoi vivant). 



ST. PETERSBURG 73 

selves an elect, superior caste; the crown of 
humanity. Into his antipathy for them there 
entered a good deal of the pride of the great 
noble and the officer who condescendingly 
mingles with liberal and middle-class scrib- 
blers. 2 It was also a characteristic of his — 
he himself knew it — to "oppose instinctively 
all trains of reasoning, all conclusions, which 
were generally admitted." 3 A distrust of 
mankind, a latent contempt for human reason, 
made him always on the alert to discover de- 
ception in himself or others. 

"He never believed in the sincerity of any 
one. All moral exhilaration seemed false to 
him; and he had a way of fixing, with that 
extraordinarily piercing gaze of his, the man 
whom he suspected was not telling the 
truth." 4 "How he used to listen! How he 

2 Tourgenev complained, in a conversation, of "this 
stupid nobleman's pride, his bragging Junkerdom." 

3 "A trait of my character, it may be good or ill, but 
it is one which was always peculiar to me, is that in spite 
of myself I always used to resist external epidemic influ- 
ences. ... I had a hatred of the general tendency." 
(Letter to P. Birukov.) 

4 Tourgenev. 



74 TOLSTOY 

used to gaze at those who spoke to him, from 
the very depths of his grey eyes, deeply sunken 
in their orbits ! With what irony his lips were 
pressed together!" 5 

"Tourgenev used to say that he had never 
experienced anything more painful than this 
piercing gaze, which, together with two or 
three words of envenomed observation, was 
capable of infuriating anybody." 6 

At their first meetings violent scenes oc- 
curred between Tolstoy and Tourgenev. 
When at a distance they cooled down and tried 
to do one another justice. But as time went 
on Tolstoy's dislike of his literary surround- 
ings grew deeper. He could not forgive these 
artists for the combination of their depraved 
life and their moral pretensions. 

"I acquired the conviction that nearly all 
were immoral men, unsound, without charac- 
ter, greatly inferior to those I had met in my 
Bohemian military life. And they were sure 
of themselves and self-content, as men might 

5 Grigorovitch. 

6 Eugene Gardine: Souvenirs sur Tourgeniev, 1883. 
See Vie et (Euvre de Tolstoi, by Birukov. 



ST. PETERSBURG 75 

be who were absolutely sound. They dis- 
gusted me." 7 

He parted from them. But he did not at 
once lose their interested faith in art. 8 His 
pride was flattered thereby. It was a faith 
which was richly rewarded; it brought him 
"women, money, fame." 

"Of this religion I was one of the pontiffs; 
an agreeable and highly profitable situation." 

The better to consecrate himself to this re- 
ligion, he sent in his resignation from the army 
(November, 1856). 

But a man of his temper could not close his 
eyes for long. He believed, he was eager to 
believe, in progress. It seemed to him "that 
this word signified something." A journey 
abroad, which lasted from the end of Janu- 
ary to the end of July of 1857, during which 
period he visited France, Switzerland, and 
Germany, resulted in the destruction of this 

7 Confessions. 

8 "There was no difference between us and an asylum 
full of lunatics. Even at the time I vaguely suspected 
as much; but as all madmen do, I regarded them as all 
mad excepting myself." — Ibid. 



76 TOLSTOY 

faith. In Paris, on the 6th of April, 1857, the 
spectacle of a public execution "showed him 
the emptiness of the superstition of progress." 

"When I saw the head part from the body 
and fall into the basket I understood in every 
recess of my being that no theory as to the 
reason of the present order of things could 
justify such an act. Even though all the men 
in the world, supported by this or that theory, 
were to find it necessary, I myself should 
know that it was wrong; for it is not what 
men say or do that decides what is good or 
bad, but my own heart." 9 

In the month of July the sight of a little 
perambulating singer at Lucerne, to whom 
the wealthy English visitors at the Schweizer- 
hof were refusing alms, made him express 
in the Diary of Prince D. Nekhludov his con- 
tempt for all the illusions dear to Liberals, and 
for those "who trace imaginary lines upon the 
sea of good and evil." 

"For them civilisation is good; barbarism is 
bad ; liberty is good ; slavery is bad. And this 
imaginary knowledge destroys the instinctive, 

9 Confessions. 



ST. PETERSBURG 77 

primordial cravings, which are the best. 
Who will define them for me — liberty, des- 
potism, civilisation, barbarism? Where does 
not good co-exist with evil? There is within 
us only one infallible guide: the universal 
Spirit which whispers to us to draw closer to 
one another." 

On his return to Russia and Yasnaya he 
once more busied himself about the peasants. 
Not that he had any illusions left concerning 
them. He writes: 

"The apologists of the people and its good 
sense speak to no purpose; the crowd is per- 
haps the union of worthy folk; but if so they 
unite only on their bestial and contemptible 
side, a side which expresses nothing but the 
weakness and cruelty of human nature." 10 

Thus he does not address himself to the 
crowd, but to the individual conscience of 
each man, each child of the people. For there 
light is to be found. He founded schools, 
without precisely knowing what he would 
teach. In order to learn, he undertook an- 
other journey abroad, which lasted from 

10 Diary of Prince D. Nekhludov. 



78 TOLSTOY 

the 3rd of July, i860, to the 23rd of April, 
1861. 11 

He studied the various pedagogic systems 
of the time. Need we say that he rejected 
one and all? Two visits to Marseilles taught 
him that the true education of the people is 
effected outside the schools (which he con- 
sidered absurd), by means of the journals, the 
museums, the libraries, the street, and every- 
day life, which he termed "the spontaneous 
school." The spontaneous school, in opposi- 
tion to the obligatory school, which he con- 
sidered silly and harmful; this was what he 
wished and attempted to institute upon his re- 
turn to Yasnaya Polyana. 12 Liberty was his 
principle. He would not admit that an elect 
class, "the privileged Liberal circle," should 
impose its knowledge and its errors upon "the 
people, to whom it is a stranger." It had no 
right to do so. This method of forced edu- 

11 At Dresden, during his travels he made the acquaint- 
ance of Auerbach, who had been the first to inspire him 
with the idea of educating the people; at Kissingen he 
met Froebel, in London Herzen, and in Brussels Proud- 
hon, who seems to have made a great impression upon him. 

12 Especially in 1861-62. 



ST. PETERSBURG 79 

cation had never succeeded in producing, at 
the University, "the men of whom humanity 
has need; but men of whom a depraved so- 
ciety has need; officials, official professors, of- 
ficial literary men, or men torn aimlessly from 
their old surroundings, whose youth has been 
spoiled and wasted, and who can find no plan 
in life: irritable, puny Liberals." 13 Go to 
the people to learn what they want! If they 
do not value "the art of reading and writing 
which the intellectuals force upon them," they 
have their reasons for that; they have other 
spiritual needs, more pressing and more legiti- 
mate. Try to understand those needs, and 
help them to satisfy them ! 

These theories, those of a revolutionary 
Conservative, as Tolstoy always was, he at- 
tempted to put into practice at Yasnaya, 
where he was rather the fellow-disciple than 
the master of his pupils. 14 At the same time, 
he endeavoured to introduce a new human 

13 Education and Culture. See Vie et CEuvre, by 
Birukov, vol. if. 

14 Tolstoy explained these principles in the review Yas- 
naya Poly ana, 1862. 



80 TOLSTOY 

spirit into agricultural exploitation. Ap- 
pointed in 1861 territorial arbitrator for the 
district of Krapiona, he was the people's 
champion against the abuses of power on the 
part of the landowners and the State. 

We must not suppose that this social activity 
satisfied him, or entirely filled his life. He 
continued to be the prey of contending pas- 
sions. Although he had suffered from the 
world, he always loved it and felt the need 
of it. Pleasure resumed him at intervals, or 
else the love of action. He would risk his 
life in hunting the bear. He played for 
heavy stakes. He would even fall under the 
influence of the literary circles of St. Peters- 
burg, for which he felt such contempt. After 
these aberrations came crises of disgust. 
Such of his writings as belong to this period 
bear unfortunate traces of this artistic and 
moral uncertainty. The Two Hussars (1856) 
has a quality of pretentiousness and elegance, 
a snobbish worldly flavour, which shocks one 
as coming from Tolstoy. Albert, written at 
Dijon in 1857, IS weak and eccentric, with no 
trace of the writer's habitual depth or pre- 



ST. PETERSBURG 81 

cision. The Diary of a Sportsman (1856), 
a more striking though hasty piece of work, 
seems to betray the disillusionment which 
Tolstoy inspired in himself. Prince Nekhl- 
udov, his Doppelganger, his double, kills him- 
self in a gaming-house. 

"He had everything: wealth, a name, in- 
tellect, and high ambitions ; he had committed 
no crime; but he had done still worse: he had 
killed his courage, his youth; he was lost, 
without even the excuse of a violent passion; 
merely from a lack of will." 

The approach of death itself does not alter 
him: 

"The same strange inconsequence, the 
same hesitation, the same frivolity of 
thought. . . ." 

Death ! ... At this period it began to 
haunt his mind. Three Deaths (1858-59) al- 
ready foreshadowed the gloomy analysis of 
The Death of Ivan Ilyitch; the solitude of the 
dying man, his hatred of the living, his des- 
perate query — "Why?" The triptych of the 
three deaths — that of the wealthy woman, that 
of the old consumptive postilion, and that of 



82 TOLSTOY 

the slaughtered dog — is not without majesty; 
the portraits are well drawn, the images are 
striking, although the whole work, which has 
been too highly praised, is somewhat loosely 
constructed, while the death of the dog lacks 
the poetic precision to be found in the writer's 
beautiful landscapes. Taking it as a whole, 
we hardly know how far it is intended as a 
work of art for the sake of art, or whether 
it has a moral intention. 

Tolstoy himself did not know. On the 4th 
of February, 1858, when he read his essay of 
admittance before the Muscovite Society of 
Amateurs of Russian Literature, he chose for 
his subject the defence of art for art's sake. 15 
It was the president of the Society, Khomia- 
kov, who, after saluting in Tolstoy "the repre- 
sentative of purely artistic literature," took up 
the defence of social and moral art. 16 

A year later the death of his dearly-loved 
brother, Nikolas, who succumbed to phthisis 17 

15 Lecture on The Superiority of the Artistic Element 
in Literature over all its Contemporary Tendencies. 

16 He cited against Tolstoy his own examples, includ- 
ing the old postilion in The Three Deaths. 

17 We may remark that another brother, Dmitri, had 



ST. PETERSBURG 83 

at Hyeres, on the 19th of September, i860, 
completely overcame Tolstoy; shook him to 
the point of "crushing his faith in goodness, 
in everything," and made him deny even his 
art: 

already died of the same disease in 1856. Tolstoy him- 
self believed that he was attacked by it in 1856, in 1862, 
and in 1 87 1. He was, as he writes (the 28th of Oc- 
tober, 1852), "of a strong constitution, but feeble in 
health." He constantly suffered from chills, sore throats, 
toothache, inflamed eyes, and rheumatism. In the Cau- 
casus, in 1852, he had "two days in the week at least to 
keep his room." Illness stopped him for several months 
in 1854, on ^e road from Silistria to Sebastopol. In 
1856, at Yasnaya, he was seriously ill with an affection 
of the lungs. In 1862 the fear of phthisis induced him 
to undergo a Koumiss cure at Samara, where he lived 
with the Bachkirs, and after 1870 he returned thither al- 
most yearly. His correspondence with Fet is full of pre- 
occupations concerning his health. This physical condi- 
tion enables one the better to understand his obsession by 
the thought of death. In later years he spoke of this ill- 
ness as of his best friend : 

"When one is ill one seems to descend a very gentle 
slope, which at a certain point is barred by a curtain, a 
light curtain of some filmy stuff; on the hither side is 
life, beyond is death. How far superior is the state of 
illness, in moral value, to that of health! Do not speak 
to me of those people who have never been ill ! They are 
terrible, the women especially so! A woman who has 



84 TOLSTOY 

"Truth is horrible. . . . Doubtless, so 
long as the desire to know and to speak the 
truth exists men will try to know and to speak 
it. This is the only remnant left me of my 
moral concepts. It is the only thing I shall 
do ; but not in the form of art ; your art. Art 
is a lie, and I can no longer love a beautiful 
lie." 18 

Less than six months later, however, he re- 
turned to the "beautiful lie " with Polik- 
ushka, 19 which of all his works is perhaps most 
devoid of moral intention, if we except the 
latent malediction upon money and its powers 
for evil ; a work written purely for art's sake ; 
a masterpiece, moreover, whose only flaws are 
a possibly excessive wealth of observation, an 
abundance of material which would have 
sufficed for a great novel, and the contrast, 
which is too severe, a little too cruel, between 

never known illness is an absolute wild beast!" (Con- 
versations with M. Paul Boyer, Le Temps, 27th of Au- 
gust, 1 90 1.) 

18 Letter to Fet, October 17, i860 (Further Letters: 
in the French version, Correspondance inedite, pp. 27- 

30). 

"Written in Brussels, 1861. 



ST. PETERSBURG 85 

the humorous opening and the atrocious cli- 
max. 20 

20 Another novel written at this period is a simple nar- 
rative of a journey — The Snowstorm — which evokes per- 
sonal memories, and is full of the beauty of poetic and 
quasi-musical impressions. Tolstoy used almost the same 
background later, in his Master and Servant (1895). 



CHAPTER VII 

"family happiness" 



CHAPTER VII 



"family happiness" 



FROM this period of transition, during which 
the genius of the man was feeling its way 
blindly, doubtful of itself and apparently ex- 
hausted, "devoid of strong passion, without a 
directing will," like Nekhludov in the Diary 
of a Sportsman — from this period issued a 
work unique in its tenderness and charm: 
Family Happiness (1859). This was the 
miracle of love. 

For many years Tolstoy had been on 
friendly terms with the Bers family. He had 
fallen in love with the mother and the three 
daughters in succession. 1 His final choice fell 
upon the second, but he dared not confess it. 
Sophie Andreyevna Bers was still a child; she 

1 When a child he had, in a fit of jealousy, pushed 
from a balcony the little girl — then aged nine — who after- 
wards became Madame Bers, with the result that she was 
lame for several years. 



90 TOLSTOY 

was seventeen years old, while Tolstoy was 
over thirty; he regarded himself as an old 
man, who had not the right to associate his 
soiled and vitiated life with that of an in- 
nocent young girl. He held out for three 
years. 2 Afterwards, in Anna Karenin, he re- 
lated how his declaration to Sophie Bers 
was effected, and how she replied to it: 
both of them tracing with one finger, under 
a table, the initials of words they dared not 
say. 

Like Levine in Anna Karenin, he was so 
cruelly honest as to place his intimate journal 
in the hands of his betrothed, in order that 
she should be unaware of none of his past 
transgressions; and Sophie, like Kitty in 
Anna Karenin, was bitterly hurt by its perusal. 
They were married on the 23rd of Septem- 
ber, 1862. 

2 See, in Family Happiness, the declaration of Sergius : 
"Suppose there were a Mr. A, an elderly man who had 
lived his life, and a lady B, young and happy, who as 
yet knew neither men nor life. As the result of various 
domestic happenings, he came to love her as a daughter, 
and was not aware that he could love her in another way 
. . ." etc. 



"FAMILY HAPPINESS" 91 

In the artist's imagination this marriage 
was consummated three years earlier, when 
Family Happiness was written. 3 For these 
years he had been living in the future; 
through the ineffable days of love that does 
not as yet know itself: through the delirious 
days of love that has attained self-knowledge, 
and the hour in which the divine, anticipated 
words are whispered; when the tears arise 
"of a happiness which departs for ever and 
will never return again"; and the triumphant 
reality of the early days of marriage; the 
egoism of lovers, "the incessant, causeless joy," 
then the approaching weariness, the vague dis- 
content, the boredom of a monotonous life, the 
two souls which softly disengage themselves 
and grow further and further away from one 
another; the dangerous attraction of the world 
for the young life — flirtations, jealousies, fatal 
misunderstandings; — love dissimulated, love 

3 Perhaps this novel contained the memories also of a 
romantic love affair which commenced in 1856, in Mos- 
cow, the second party to which was a young girl very dif- 
ferent to himself, very worldly and frivolous, from whom 
he finally parted, although they were sincerely attached to 
one another. 



92 TOLSTOY 

lost; and at length the sad and tender autumn 
of the heart; the face of love which reappears, 
paler, older, but more touching by reason of 
tears and the marks of time; the memory of 
troubles, the regret for the ill things done and 
the years that are lost; the calm of the even- 
ing; the august passage from love to friend- 
ship, and the romance of the passion of mater- 
nity. . . . All that was to come, all this 
Tolstoy had dreamed of, tasted in advance; 
and in order to live through those days more 
vividly he lived in the well-beloved. For the 
first time — perhaps the only time in all his 
writings — the story passes in the heart of a 
woman, and is told by her; and with what ex- 
quisite delicacy, what spiritual beauty! — the 
beauty of a soul withdrawn behind a veil of 
the truest modesty. For once the analysis of 
the writer is deprived of its cruder lights; 
there is no feverish struggle to present the 
naked truth. The secrets of the inward life 
are divined rather than spoken. The art and 
the heart of the artist are both touched and 
softened; there is a harmonious balance of 



"FAMILY HAPPINESS" 93 

thought and form. Family Happiness has 
the perfection of a work of Racine. 

Marriage, whose sweet and bitter Tolstoy 
presented with so limpid a profundity, was to 
be his salvation. He was tired, unwell, dis- 
gusted with himself and his efforts. The 
brilliant success which had crowned his earlier 
works had given way to the absolute silence of 
the critics and the indifference of the public. 4 
He pretended, haughtily, to be not ill- 
pleased. 

"My reputation has greatly diminished in 
popularity; a fact which was saddening me. 
Now I am content; I know that I have to say 
something, and that I have the power to speak 
it with no feeble voice. As for the public, 
let it think what it will !" 5 

But he was boasting: he himself was not 
sure of his art. Certainly he was the master 
of his literary instrument; but he did not know 
what to do with it, as he said in respect of 
Polikushka: "it was a matter of chattering 

4 From 1857 to 1861. 

5 Journal, October, 1857. 



94 TOLSTOY 

about the first subject that came to hand, by 
a man who knows how to hold his pen." 6 His 
social work was abortive. In 1862 he re- 
signed his appointment as territorial arbitra- 
tor. The same year the police made a search 
at Yasnaya Polyana, turned everything topsy- 
turvy, and closed the school. Tolstoy was 
absent at the time, suffering from overwork; 
fearing that he was attacked by phthisis. 

"The squabbles of arbitration had become 
so painful to me, the work of the school so 
vague, and the doubts which arose from the 
desire of teaching others while hiding my own 
ignorance of what had to be taught, were so 
disheartening that I fell ill. Perhaps I 
should then have fallen into the state of de- 
spair to which I was to succumb fifteen years 
later, had there not remained to me an un- 
known aspect of life which promised salva- 
tion — the life of the family." 7 

6 Letter to Fet, 1863 (Vie et GEuvre). 

7 Confessions, 



CHAPTER VIII 

MARRIAGE 



CHAPTER VIII 

MARRIAGE 

AT first he rejoiced in the new life, with the 
passion which he brought to everything. 1 
The personal influence of Countess Tolstoy 
was a godsend to his art. Greatly gifted 2 in 
a literary sense, she was, as she says, "a true 
author's wife," so keenly did she take her hus- 
band's work to heart. She worked with him 
— worked to his dictation; re-copied his rough 
drafts. 3 She sought to protect him from his 
religious daemon, that formidable genie which 
was already, at moments, whisperingwords that 
meant the death of art. She tried to shut the 
door upon all social Utopias. 4 She requick- 

1 "Domestic happiness completely absorbs me" (Janu- 
ary 5, 1863). "I am so happy! so happy! I love her 
so!" (February 8, 1863). See Vie et CEuvre. 

2 She had written several novels. 

3 It is said that she copied War and Peace seven times. 

4 Directly after his marriage Tolstoy suspended his 
work of teaching, his review, and his school. 

»7 



98 TOLSTOY 

ened her husband's creative genius. She did 
more: she brought as an offering to that genius 
the wealth of a fresh feminine temperament. 
With the exception of the charming silhouettes 
in Childhood and Boyhood, there are few 
women in the earlier works of Tolstoy, or they 
remain of secondary importance. Woman ap- 
pears in Family Happiness, written under the 
influence of his love for Sophie Bers. In the 
works which follow there are numerous types 
of young girls and women, full of intensest 
life, and even superior to the male types. 
One likes to think not only that Countess 
Tolstoy served her husband as the model for 
Natasha in War and Peace 5 and for Kitty in 
Anna Karenin® but that she was enabled, by 

5 Her sister Tatiana, intelligent and artistic, whose wit 
and musical talent were greatly admired by Tolstoy, also 
served him as a model. Tolstoy used to say, "I took 
Tania [Tatiana] ; I beat her up with Sonia [Sophie Bers, 
Countess Tolstoy], and out came Natasha" (cited by P. 
Birukov.) 

6 The installation of Dolly in the tumble-down coun- 
try house ; Dolly and the children ; a number of details of 
dress and toilet; without speaking of certain secrets of 
the feminine mind, which even the intuition of a man of 



MARRIAGE 99 

means of her confidences and her own vision, 
to become his discreet and valuable collabo- 
rator. Certain pages of Anna Karenin in par- 
ticular seem to me to reveal a woman's touch. 
Thanks to the advantages of this union, 
Tolstoy enjoyed for a space of twelve or four- 
teen years a peace and security which had 
been long unknown to him. 7 He was able, 
sheltered by love, to dream and to realise at 

genius might perhaps have failed to penetrate, if a woman 
had not betrayed them to him. 

7 Here is a characteristic instance of Tolstoy's enslave- 
ment by his creative genius: his Journal is interrupted for 
thirteen years, from November I, 1865, when the com- 
position of War and Peace was in full swing. The ego- 
ism of the artist has silenced the monologue of the con- 
science. — This period of creation was also a period of 
robust physical life. Tolstoy was "mad on hunting." 
"Hunting, I forget everything. . . ." (Letter of 
1864.) In September, 1864, during a hunt on horse- 
back, he broke his arm, and it was during his convales- 
cence that the first portions of War and Peace were 
dictated. — "On recovering consciousness after fainting, I 
said to myself: 'I am an artist.' And I am, but a lonely 
artist." (Letter to Fet, January 29, 1865.) All the 
letters written at this time to Fet are full of an exulting 
joy of creation. "I regard all that I have hitherto pub- 
lished," he says, "as merely a trial of my pen." (Ibid.) 



100 TOLSTOY 

leisure the masterpieces of his brain, the col- 
ossal monuments which dominate the fiction 

of the nineteenth century War and Peace 

(1864-69) and Anna Karenin (1873-77). 

War and Peace is the vastest epic of our 
times — a modern Iliad. A world of faces and 
of passions moves within it. Over this human 
ocean of innumerable waves broods a sover- 
eign mind, which serenely raises or stills the 
tempest. 

More than once in the past, while contem- 
plating this work, I was reminded of Homer 
and of Goethe, in spite of the vastly different 
spirit and period of the work. Since then I 
have discovered that at the period of writing 
these books Tolstoy was as a matter of fact 
nourishing his mind upon Homer and 
Goethe. 8 Moreover, in the notes, dated 1865, 
in which he classifies the various departments 

8 Before this date Tolstoy had noted, among the books 
which influenced him between the ages of twenty and thir- 
ty-five : 

"Goethe: Hermann and Dorothea — Very great influ- 



MARRIAGE 101 

of letters, he mentions, as belonging to the 
same family, Odyssey, Iliad, 1805. 9 The 
natural development of his mind led him from 
the romance of individual destinies to the ro- 
mance of armies and peoples, those vast hu- 
man hordes in which the wills of millions of 
beings are dissolved. His tragic experiences 
at the siege of Sebastopol helped him to com- 
prehend the soul of the Russian nation and 
its daily life. According to his first inten- 

"Homer: Iliad and Odyssey (in Russian) — Very- 
great influence." 
And in June, 1863, he notes in his diary: 

"I am reading Goethe, and many ideas are coming to 
life within me." 

In the spring of 1863 Tolstoy was re-reading Goethe, 
and wrote of Faust as "the poetry of the world of 
thought; the poetry which expresses that which can be 
expressed by no other art." 

Later he sacrificed Goethe, as he did Shakespeare, to 
his God. But he remained faithful in his admiration of 
Homer. In August, 1857, ne was reading, with equal 
zest, the Iliad and the Bible. In one of his latest works, 
the pamphlet attacking Shakespeare (1903), it is Homer 
that he opposes to Shakespeare as an example of sincerity, 
balance, and true art. 

9 The two first parts of War and Peace appeared in 
1865-66 under the title The Year 1805. 



102 TOLSTOY 

tions, the gigantic War and Peace was to be 
merely the central panel of a series of epic 
frescoes, in which the poem of Russia should 
be developed from Peter the Great to the 
Decembrists. 10 

10 Tolstoy commenced this work in 1863 by The De- 
cembrists, of which he wrote three fragments. But he 
saw that the foundations of his plan were not sufficiently 
assured, and going further back, to the period of the 
Napoleonic Wars, he wrote War and Peace. Publica- 
tion was commenced in the Rousski Viestnik of January, 
1865; the sixth volume was completed in the autumn of 
1869. Then Tolstoy ascended the stream of history; and 
he conceived the plan of an epic romance dealing with 
Peter the Great; then of another, Mirovitch, dealing 
with the rule of the Empresses of the eighteenth century 
and their favourites. He worked at it from 1870 to 
1873, surrounded with documents, and writing the first 
drafts of various portions; but his realistic scruples made 
him renounce the project: he was conscious that he could 
never succeed in resuscitating the spirit of those distant 
periods in a sufficiently truthful fashion. Later, in Janu- 
ary, 1876, he conceived the idea of another romance of 
the period of Nikolas I. ; then he eagerly returned to the 
Decembrists, collecting the evidence of survivors and visit- 
ing the scenes of the action. In 1878 he wrote to his aunt, 
Countess A. A. Tolstoy: "This work is so important 
to me! You cannot imagine how much it means to me; 
it is as much to me as your faith is to you. I would say 
even more." {Correspondence.) But in proportion as 



MARRIAGE 103 

To be truly sensible of the power of this 
work, we must take into account its hidden 
unity. Too many readers, unable to see it in 
perspective, perceive in it nothing but thou- 
sands of details, whose profusion amazes and 
distracts them. They are lost in this forest of 
life. The reader must stand aloof, upon a 
height; he must attain the view of the un- 
obstructed horizon, the vast circle of forest and 
meadow; then he will catch the Homeric 
spirit of the work, the calm of eternal laws, 
the awful rhythm of the breathing of Destiny, 
the sense of the whole of which every de- 
tail makes a part; and the genius of the artist, 
supreme over the whole, like the God of 
Genesis who broods upon the face of the 
waters. 

he plumbed the subject he grew away from it; his heart 
was in it no longer. As early as April, 1879, he wrote 
to Fet: "The Decembrists? If I were thinking of it, 
if I were to write it, I should flatter myself with the 
hope that the very atmosphere of my mind would be in- 
supportable to those who fire upon men for the good of 
humanity." (Ibid.) At this period of his life the re- 
ligious crisis had set in ; he was about to burn his ancient 
idols. 



104 TOLSTOY 

In the beginning, the calm of the ocean. 
Peace, and the life of Russia before the war. 
The first hundred pages reflect, with an im- 
passive precision, a detached irony, the yawn- 
ing emptiness of worldly minds. Only to- 
wards the hundredth page do we hear the cry 
of one of these living dead — the worst among 
them, Prince Basil: 

"We commit sins; we deceive one an- 
other; and why do we do it all? My friend, 
I am more than sixty years old. . . . All 
ends in death. . . . Death — what hor- 
ror!" 

Among these idle, insipid, untruthful souls, 
capable of every aberration, of every crime, 
certain saner natures are prominent: genuine 
natures by their clumsy candour, like Pierre 
Besoukhov; by their deeply rooted indepen- 
dence, their Old Russian peculiarities, like 
Marie Dmitrievna; by the freshness of their 
youth, like the little Rostofls : natures full of 
goodness and resignation, like the Princess 
Marie; and those who, like Prince Andrei, 
are not good, but proud, and are tormented 
by an unhealthy existence. 



MARRIAGE 105 

Now comes the first muttering of the waves. 
The Russian army is in Austria. Fatality is 
supreme: nowhere more visibly imperious 
than in the loosing of elementary forces — in 
the war. The true leaders are those who do 
not seek to lead or direct, but, like Kutuzov 
or Bagration, to "allow it to be believed that 
their personal intentions are in perfect agree- 
ment with what is really the simple result of 
the force of circumstances, the will of sub- 
ordinates, and the caprices of chance." The 
advantage of surrendering to the hand of Des- 
tiny! The happiness of simple action, a sane 
and normal state. . . . The troubled 
spirits regain their poise. Prince Andrei 
breathes, begins to live. . . . And while 
in the far distance, remote from the life- 
giving breath of the holy tempest, Pierre and 
the Princess Marie are threatened by the con- 
tagion of their world and the deception of love, 
Andrei, wounded at Austerlitz, has suddenly, 
amid the intoxication of action brutally in- 
terrupted, the revelation of the serene im- 
mensity of the universe. Lying on his back, 
"he sees nothing now, except, very far above 



106 TOLSTOY 

him, a sky infinitely deep, wherein light, grey- 
ish clouds go softly wandering." 

"What peacefulness! How calm!" he was 
saying to himself; "it was not like this when 
I was running by and shouting. . . . 
How was it I did not notice it before, this 
illimitable depth? How happy I am to have 
found it at last! Yes, all is emptiness, all is 
deception, except this. And God be praised 
for this calm! . . ." 

But life resumes him, and again the wave 
falls. Left once more to themselves, in the 
demoralising atmosphere of cities, the rest- 
less, discouraged souls wander blindly in the 
darkness. Sometimes through the poisoned 
atmosphere of the world sweep the intoxicat- 
ing, maddening odours of nature, love, and 
springtime; the blind forces, which draw to- 
gether Prince Andrei and the charming Nat- 
asha, to throw her, a moment later, into the 
arms of the first seducer to hand. So much 
poetry, so much tenderness, so much purity of 
heart, tarnished by the world! And always 
"the wide sky which broods above the out- 
rage and abjectness of the earth." But man 



MARRIAGE 107 

does not see it. Even Andrei has forgotten 
the light of Austerlitz. For him the sky is 
now only "a dark, heavy vault" which covers 
the face of emptiness. 

It is time for the hurricane of war to burst 
once more upon these vitiated minds. The 
fatherland, Russia, is invaded. Then comes 
the day of Borodino, with its solemn majesty. 
Enmities are effaced. Dologhov embraces his 
enemy Pierre. Andrei, wounded, weeps for 
pity and compassion over the misery of the 
man whom he most hated, Anatol Kuraguin, 
his neighbour in the ambulance. The unity 
of hearts is accomplished; unity in passionate 
sacrifice to the country and submission to the 
divine laws. 

"To accept the frightful necessity of war, 
seriously and austerely. . . . To human 
liberty, war is the most painful act of sub- 
mission to the divine laws. Simplicity of 
heart consists in submission to the will of 
God." 

The soul of the Russian people and its sub- 
mission to Destiny are incarnated in the 
person of the commander-in-chief, Kutuzov. 



108 TOLSTOY 

"This old man, who has no passions left, but 
only experience, the result of the passions, and 
in whom intelligence, which is intended to 
group together facts and to draw from them 
conclusions, is replaced by a philosophical con- 
templation of events, devises nothing and un- 
dertakes nothing; but he listens to and remem- 
bers everything; he knows how to profit by 
it at the right moment; he will hinder noth- 
ing that is of use, he will permit nothing harm- 
ful. He sees on the faces of his troops that 
inexpressible force which is known as the will 
to conquer; it is latent victory. He admits 
something more powerful than his own will : 
the inevitable march of the facts which pass 
before his eyes ; he sees them, he follows them, 
and he is able mentally to stand aloof." 

In short, he has the heart of a Russian. 
This fatalism of the Russian people, calmly 
heroic, is personified also in the poor moujik, 
Platon Karatayev, simple, pious, and resigned, 
with his kindly patient smile in suffering and 
in death. Through suffering and experience, 
above the ruins of their country, after the hor- 
rors of its agony, Pierre and Andrei, the two 



MARRIAGE 109 

heroes of the book, attain, through love and 
faith, to the moral deliverance and the mystic 
joy by which they behold God living. 

Tolstoy does not stop here. The epilogue, 
of which the action passes in 1820, deals with 
the transition from one age to another; from 
one Napoleonic era to the era of the Decem- 
brists. It produces an impression of con- 
tinuity, and of the resumption of life. In- 
stead of commencing and ending in the midst 
of a crisis, Tolstoy finishes, as he began, at 
the moment when a great wave has spent it- 
self, while that following it is gathering it- 
self together. Already we obtain a glimpse 
of the heroes to be, of the conflicts which will 
ensue between them, and of the dead who are 
born again in the living. 11 

11 Pierre Besoukhov, who has married Natasha, will 
become a Decembrist. He has founded a secret society 
to watch over the general good, a sort of Tugelbund. 
Natasha associates herself with his plans with the utmost 
enthusiasm. Denissov cannot conceive of a pacific revo- 
lution; but is quite ready for an armed revolt. Nikolas 
Rostoff has retained his blind soldier's loyalty. He who 
said before Austerlitz, "We have only one thing to do: 
to fight and never to think," is angry with Pierre, and 
exclaims: "My oath before all! If I were ordered to 



110 TOLSTOY 

I have tried to indicate the broad lines of 
the romance ; for few readers take the trouble 
to look for them. But what words are ade- 
quate to describe the extraordinary vitality 
of these hundreds of heroes, all distinct indi- 
viduals, all drawn with unforgettable 
mastery: soldiers, peasants, great nobles, Rus- 
sians, Austrians, Frenchmen! Not a line 
savours of improvisation. For this gallery 
of portraits, unexampled in European litera- 
ture, Tolstoy made sketches without number: 

march against you with my squadron I should march and 
I should strike home." His wife, Princess Marie, agrees 
with him. Prince Andrei's son, little Nikolas Bolkonsky, 
fifteen years old, delicate, sickly, yet charming, with wide 
eyes and golden hair, listens feverishly to the discussion; 
all his love is Pierre's and Natasha's; he does not care 
greatly for Nikolas and Marie; he worships his father, 
whom he has never seen ; he dreams of growing like him, 
of being grown up, of doing something wonderful, he 
knows not what. "Whatever they tell me, I will do it. 
. . . Yes, I shall do it. He would have beeij pleased 
with me." — And the book ends with the dream of a child, 
who sees himself in the guise of one of Plutarch's heroes, 
with his uncle Pierre by his side, preceded by Glory, and 
followed by an army. — If The Decembrists had been writ- 
ten then little Bolkonsky would doubtless have been one 
of its heroes. 



MARRIAGE 111 

"combined," as he says, "millions of proj- 
ects" ; buried himself in libraries ; laid under 
contribution his family archives, 12 his previ- 
ous notes, his personal memories. This 
meticulous preparation ensured the solidity 
of the work, but did not damp his spontaneity. 
Tolstoy worked with enthusiasm, with an 
eagerness and a delight which communicate 
themselves to the reader. Above all, the great 
charm of War and Peace resides in its spirit 
of youth. No other work of Tolstoy's pre- 
sents in such abundance the soul of childhood 
and of youth; and each youthful spirit is a 
strain of music, pure as a spring, full of 
a touching and penetrating grace, like a 
melody of Mozart's. Of such are the young 
Nikolas Rostoff, Sonia, and poor little Petia. 
Most exquisite of all is Natasha. Dear lit- 
tle girl! — fantastic, full of laughter, her heart 
full of affection, we see her grow up before 

12 1 have remarked that the two families Rostoff and 
Bolkonsky, in War and Peace, recall the families of Tol- 
stoy's father and mother by many characteristics. Again, 
in the novels of the Caucasus and Sebastopol there are 
many of the types of soldiers, officers and men, which ap- 
pear in War and Peace. 



112 TOLSTOY 

us, we follow her through life, with the 
tenderness one would feel for a sister — who 
that has read of her does not feel that he has 
known her? . . . That wonderful night 
of spring, when Natasha, at her window, 
flooded with the moonlight, dreams and 
speaks wildly, above the window of the listen- 
ing Andrei . . . the emotions of the first 
ball, the expectation of love, the burgeoning 
of riotous dreams and desires, the sleigh-ride, 
the night in the snow-bound forest, full of 
fantastic lights; Nature, and the embrace of 
her vague tenderness; the evening at the 
Opera, the unfamiliar world of art, in which 
reason grows confused ; the folly of the hearty 
and the folly of the body yearning for love; 
the misery that floods the soul ; the divine pity 
which watches over the dying lover. . . . 
One cannot evoke these pitiful memories 
without emotion; such emotion as one would 
feel in speaking of a dear and beloved woman. 
How such a creation shows the weakness of 
the female types in almost the whole of con- 
temporary drama and fiction! Life itself has 
been captured; life so fluid, so supple, that 



MARRIAGE US 

we seem to see it throbbing and changing from 
one line to another. 

Princess Marie, the ugly woman, whose 
goodness makes her beautiful, is no less per- 
fect a portrait; but how the timid, awkward 
girl would have blushed, how those who re- 
semble her must blush, at rinding unveiled 
all the secrets of a heart which hides itself so 
fearfully from every glance! 

In general the portraits of women are, as 
I have said, very much finer than the male 
characters; in especial than those of the two 
heroes to whom Tolstoy has given his own 
ideas; the weak, pliable nature of Pierre Be- 
soukhov, and the hard, eager nature of Prince 
Andrei Bolkonsky. These are characters 
which lack a centre of gravity; they oscillate 
perpetually, rather than evolve; they run 
from one extreme to the other, yet never ad- 
vance. One may, of course, reply that in this 
they are thoroughly Russian. I find, how- 
ever, that Russians have criticised them in 
similar terms. Tourgenev doubtless had 
them in mind when he complained that Tol- 
stoy's psychology was a stationary matter. 



114 TOLSTOY 

u No real development. Eternal hesitations: 
oscillations of feeling." 13 Tolstoy himself 
admitted that he had at times rather sacrificed 
the individual character to the historical de- 
sign. 14 

It is true, in fact, that the glory of War and 
Peace resides in the resurrection of a com- 
plete historical period, with its national mi- 
grations, its warfare of peoples. Its true he- 
roes are these peoples; and behind them, as 
behind the heroes of Homer, the gods who 
lead them; the forces, invisible, "infinitely 
small, which direct the masses," the breath of 
the Infinite. These gigantic conflicts, in 
which a hidden destiny hurls the blind na- 
tions together, have a mythical grandeur. 
Our thoughts go beyond the Iliad: we are re- 
minded of the Hindu epics. 

13 Letter of February 2, 1868, cited by Birukov. 

14 Notably, he said, that of Prince Andrei in the first 
part. 



CHAPTER IX 



"anna karenin" 



CHAPTER IX 



"ANNA KARENIN" 



Anna Karenin, with War and Peace, 1 marks 
the climax of this period of maturity. Anna 
Karenin is a more perfect work; the work of 
a mind more certain of its artistic creation, 
richer too in experience; a mind for which 
the world of the heart holds no more secrets. 
But it lacks the fire of youth, the freshness of 

1 It is regrettable that the beauty of the poetical concep- 
tion of the work is often tarnished by the philosophical 
chatter with which Tolstoy has loaded his work, especially 
in the later portions. He is determined to make an ex- 
position of his theory of the fatality of history. The pity 
is that he returns to the point incessantly, and obstinately 
repeats himself. Flaubert, who "gave vent to cries of ad- 
miration" while reading the first two volumes, which he 
declared "sublime" and "full of Shakespearean things," 
threw the third volume aside in boredom: "He goes off 
horribly. He repeats himself, and he philosophises. We 
see the aristocrat, the author, and the Russian, while hith- 
erto we have seen nothing but Nature and Humanity." 
(Letter to Tourgenev, January, 1880.) 

117 



118 TOLSTOY 

enthusiasm, the mighty pinions of War and 
Peace. Already Tolstoy has lost something 
of the joy of creation. The temporary peace 
of the first months of marriage has flown. 
Into the enchanted circle of love and art which 
Countess Tolstoy had drawn about him moral 
scruples begin to intrude. 

Even in the early chapters of War and 
Peace, written one year after marriage, the 
confidences of Prince Andrei to Pierre upon 
the subject of marriage denote the disen- 
chantment of the man who sees in the beloved 
woman the stranger, the innocent enemy, the 
involuntary obstacle to his moral develop- 
ment. Some letters of 1865 announce the 
coming return of religious troubles. As yet 
they are only passing threats, blotting out the 
joy of life. But during the months of 1869, 
when Tolstoy was finishing War and Peace, 
there fell a more serious blow. 

He had left his home for a few days to visit 
a distant estate. One night he was lying in 
bed; it had just struck two: 

"I was dreadfully tired; I was sleepy, and 
felt comfortable enough. All of a sudden I 



"ANNA KARENIN" 119 

was seized by such anguish, such terror as 
I had never felt in all my life. I will tell 
you about it in detail ; it was truly frightful. 
I leapt from the bed and told them to get the 
horses ready. While they were putting them 
in I fell asleep, and when I woke again I 
was completely recovered. Yesterday the 
same thing happened, but in a much less de- 
gree." 

The palace of illusion, so laboriously raised 
by the love of the wife, was tottering. In the 
spiritual blank which followed the achieve- 
ment of War and Peace the artist was re- 
captured by his philosophical 2 and educa- 
tional preoccupations; he wished to write a 
spelling-book for the people; he worked at it 
feverishly for four years; he was prouder of 
it than of War and Peace, and when it was 
finished (1872) he wrote a second (1875). 
Then he conceived a passion for Greek; he 

2 While he was finishing War and Peace, in the sum- 
mer of 1869, he discovered Schopenhauer, and was filled 
with enthusiasm. "I am convinced that Schopenhauer is 
the most genial of men. Here is the whole universe re- 
flected with an extraordinary clearness and beauty.' , 
(Letter to Fet, August 30, 1869.) 



120 TOLSTOY 

studied Latin from morning to night; he 
abandoned all other work; he discovered "the 
delightful Xenophon," and Homer, the real 
Homer; not the Homer of the translators, 
"all these Joukhovskys and Vosses who sing 
with any sort of voice they can manage to pro- 
duce, guttural, peevish, mawkish," but "this 
other devil, who sings at the top of his voice, 
without it ever entering his head that any one 
may be listening" 3 

"Without a knowledge of Greek, no educa- 
tion! I am convinced that until now I knew 
nothing of all that is truly beautiful and of 
a simple beauty in human speech." 

This is folly, and he admits as much. He 
goes to school again with such passionate en- 
thusiasm that he falls ill. In 1871 he was 
forced to go to Samara to undergo the kou- 
miss cure, staying with the Bachkirs. Noth- 
ing pleased him but his Greek. At the end of 
a lawsuit, in 1872 he spoke seriously of selling 

3 "Between Homer and his translators," he says again, 
"there is the difference between boiled and distilled water 
and the spring-water broken on the rocks, which may 
carry the sand along with it as it flows, but becomes more 
pure and fresh on that account." 



"ANNA KARENIN" 121 

all that he possessed in Russia and of settling 
in England. Countess Tolstoy was in de- 
spair: 

"If you are always absorbed in your Greeks 
you will never get well. It is they who have 
caused this suffering and this indifference 
concerning your present life. It is not in vain 
that we call Greek a dead language; it pro- 
duces a condition of death in the spirit." 4 

Finally, to the great joy of the Countess, 
after many plans abandoned before they were 
fairly commenced, on March 19, 1873, ne 
began to write Anna Karenin. 5 While he 
worked at it his life was saddened by domestic 
sorrow; 6 his wife was ill. "Happiness does 
not reign in the house," 7 he writes to Fet in 
1876. 

To some extent the work bears traces of 

4 Papers of Countess Tolstoy (Fie et CEuvre). 

6 It was completed in 1877. It appeared — minus the 
epilogue — in the Rousski Viestniki. 

6 The death of three children (November 18, 1873, 
February, 1875, November, 1875) ; of his Aunt Tatiana, 
his adopted mother (June, 1874), and of his Aunt Pela- 
gia (December, 1875). 

7 Letter to Fet, March, 1876. 



122 TOLSTOY 

these depressing experiences, and of passions 
disillusioned. 8 Save in the charming passages 
dealing with the betrothal of Levine, love is 
no longer presented with the spirit of youth 
and poetry which places certain pages of War 
and Peace on a level with the most beautiful 
lyric poetry of all times. It has assumed a 
different character: bitter, sensual, imperious. 
The fatality which broods over the romance 
is no longer, as in War and Peace, a kind of 
Krishna, murderous and serene, the Destiny 
of empires, but the madness of love, "Venus 
herself." She it is, in the wonderful ball 
scene, when passion seizes upon Anna and 
Vronsky unawares, who endows the innocent 
beauty of Anna, crowned with forget-me-not 
and clothed in black velvet, with "an almost 
infernal seductiveness." She it is who, when 
Vronsky has just declared his love, throws a 
light upon Anna's face; but a light "not of 
joy; it was the terrible glare of an incendiary 

8 "Woman is the stumbling-block of a man's career. 
It is difficult to love a woman and to do nothing of any 
profit ; and the only way of not being reduced to inaction 
by love is to marry." (Anna Karenin.) 



"ANNA KARENIN" 123 

fire upon a gloomy night." She it is who, 
in the veins of this loyal and reasonable 
woman, this young, affectionate mother, pours 
a voluptuous stream as of irresistible ichor, 
and installs herself in her heart, never to 
leave it until she has destroyed it. No one 
can approach Anna without feeling the at- 
traction and the terror of this hidden daemon. 
Kitty is the first to discover it, with a shock 
of bewilderment. A mysterious fear mingles 
with the delight of Vronsky when he goes to 
see Anna. Levine, in her presence, loses all 
his will. Anna herself is perfectly well 
aware that she is no longer her own mistress. 
As the story develops the implacable passion 
consumes, little by little, the whole moral 
structure of this proud woman. All that is 
best in her, her sincere, courageous mind, 
crumbles and falls; she has no longer the 
strength to sacrifice her wordly vanity; her 
life has no other object than to please her 
lover; she refuses, with shame and terror, to 
bear children; jealousy tortures her; the 
sensual passion which enslaves her obliges her 
to lie with her gestures, her voice, her eyes; 



1*4 TOLSTOY 

she falls to the level of those women who no 
longer seek anything but the power of mak- 
ing every man turn to look after them; she 
uses morphia to dull her sufferings, until the 
intolerable torments which consume her over- 
come her with the bitter sense of her moral 
downfall, and cast her beneath the wheels of 
the railway-carriage. "And the little moujik 
with the untidy beard" — the sinister vision 
which has haunted her dreams and Vronsky's 
— "leaned over the track from the platform 
of the carriage"; and, as the prophetic dream 
foretold, "he was bent double over a sack, in 
which he was hiding the remains of some- 
thing which had known life, with its torments, 
its betrayals, and its sorrows." 

"Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." 9 

Around this tragedy of a soul consumed 
by love and crushed by the law of God — a 
painting in a single shade, and of terrible 
gloom — Tolstoy has woven, as in War and 
Peace, the romances of other lives. Un- 
fortunately these parallel stories alternate in 

9 The motto at the commencement of the book. 



"ANNA KARENIN" 125 

a somewhat stiff and artificial manner, with- 
out achieving the organic unity of the sym- 
phony of War and Peace. It may also be 
said that the perfect realism of certain of the 
pictures — the artistocratic circles of St. 
Petersburg and their idle discourse — is now 
and again superfluous and unnecessary. 
Finally, and more openly than in War and 
Peace, Tolstoy has presented his own moral 
character and his philosophic ideas side by 
side with the spectacle of life. None the less, 
the work is of a marvellous richness. There 
is the same profusion of types as in War and 
Peace, and all are of a striking justness. The 
portraits of the men seem to me even superior. 
Tolstoy has depicted with evident delight the 
amiable egoist, Stepan Arcadievitch, whom 
no one can look at without responding to his 
affectionate smile, and Karenin, the perfect 
type of the high official, the distinguished and 
commonplace statesman, with his mania for 
concealing his real opinions and feelings 
under a mask of perpetual irony: a mixture 
of dignity and cowardice, of Phariseeism and 
Christian feeling: a strange product of an 



126 TOLSTOY 

artificial world, from which he can never 
completely free himself in spite of his intel- 
ligence and his true generosity; a man afraid 
to listen to his own heart, and rightly so 
afraid, since when he does surrender to it, 
he ends by falling into a state of nonsensical 
mysticism. 

But the principal interest of the romance, 
besides the tragedy of Anna and the varied 
pictures of Russian society towards i860 — of 
salons, officers' clubs, balls, theatres, races — 
lies in its autobiographical character. More 
than any other personage of Tolstoy's books, 
Constantine Levine is the incarnation of the 
writer himself. Not only has Tolstoy attrib- 
uted to him his own ideas — at one and the 
same time conservative and democratic — and 
the anti-Liberalism of the provincial aristo- 
crat who despises "intellectuals" ; 10 but he has 
made him the gift of part of his own life. 
The love of Levine and Kitty and their first 
years of marriage are a transposition of his 
own domestic memories, just as the death of 

10 Notice also, in the epilogue, the hostility towards 
warfare, nationalism, and Pan-Slavism. 



"ANNA KARENIN" 127 

Levine's brother is a melancholy evocation of 
the death of Tolstoy's brother, Dmitri. The 
latter portion, useless to the romance, gives us 
an insight into the troubles which were then 
oppressing the author. While the epilogue 
of War and Peace was an artistic transition 
to another projected work, the epilogue to 
Anna Karenin is an autobiographical transi- 
tion to the moral revolution which, two years 
later, was to find expression in the Confes- 
sions. Already, in the course of Anna Ka- 
renin, he returns again and again to a violent 
or ironical criticism of contemporary society, 
which he never ceased to attack in his subse- 
quent works. War is declared upon deceit: 
war upon lies; upon virtuous as well as vi- 
cious lies; upon liberal chatter, fashionable 
charity, drawing-room religion, and philan- 
thropy. War against the world, which dis- 
torts all truthful feelings, and inevitably 
crushes the generous enthusiasm of the mind! 
Death throws an unexpected light upon the 
social conventions. Before Anna dying, the 
stilted Karenin is softened. Into this lifeless 
soul, in which everything is artificial, shines 



128 TOLSTOY 

a ray of love and of Christian forgiveness. 
All three — the husband, the wife, and the 
lover — are momentarily transformed. All 
three become simple and loyal. But as Anna 
recovers, all three are sensible, "facing the 
almost holy moral strength which was guid- 
ing them from within, the existence of another 
force, brutal but all-powerful, which was di- 
recting their lives despite themselves, and 
which would not leave them in peace." And 
they knew from the beginning that they 
would be powerless in the coming struggle, 
in which " they would be obliged to do the 
evil that the world would consider neces- 
sary." » 

If Levine, like Tolstoy, whose incarnation 
he is, also became purified in the epilogue to 
the book, it was because he too was touched 
by mortality. Previously, "incapable of be- 
lieving, he was equally incapable of absolute 
doubt. 12 After he beheld his brother die the 
terror of his ignorance possessed him. For a 

11 "Evil is that which is reasonable to the world. Sac- 
rifice and love are insanity." {Anna Karenin, vol. ii.) 

12 Anna Karenin, vol. ii. 



"ANNA KARENIN" 129 

time this misery was stifled by his marriage; 
but it re-awakened at the birth of his first- 
born. He passed alternately through crises 
of prayer and negation. He read the phi- 
losophers in vain. He began, in his dis- 
tracted state, to fear the temptation of suicide. 
Physical work was a solace; it presented no 
doubts ; all was clear. Levine conversed with 
the peasants ; one of them spoke of the men 
"who live not for self, but for God." This 
was to him an illumination. He saw the an- 
tagonism between the reason and the heart. 
Reason preached the ferocious struggle for 
life; there is- nothing reasonable in loving 
one's neighbour: 

"Reason has taught me nothing; all that I 
know has been given to me, revealed to me 
by the heart." 13 

From this time peace returned. The word 
of the humble peasant, whose heart was his 
only guide, had led him back to God. . . . 
To what God? He did not seek to know. 
His attitude toward the Church at this mo- 
ment, as was Tolstoy's for a long period, was 

13 Anna Karenin, vol. ii. 



130 TOLSTOY 

humble, and in no wise defiant of her dogmas. 
"There is a truth even in the illusion of the 
celestial vault and in the apparent movement 
of the stars." 14 

14 Anna Karenin, vol. ii. 



CHAPTER X 
THE CRISIS 



CHAPTER X 

THE CRISIS 

The misery which oppressed Levine, and the 
longing for suicide which he concealed from 
Kitty, Tolstoy was at this period concealing 
from his wife. But he had not as yet 
achieved the calm which he attributed to his 
hero. To be truthful, this mental state is 
hardly communicated to the reader. We feel 
that it is desired rather than realised, and 
that Levine's relapse among his doubts is im- 
minent. Tolstoy was not duped by his de- 
sires. He had the greatest difficulty in reach- 
ing the end of his work. Anna Karenin 
wearied him before he had finished it. 1 He 
could work no longer. He remained at a 

1 "Now I am harnessing myself again to the wearisome 
and vulgar Anna Karenin, with the sole desire of getting 
rid of it as quickly as possible." (Letters to Fet, August 
26, 1875.) "I must finish the romance, which is weary- 
ing me." (Ibid., March 1, 1876.) 

133 



134 TOLSTOY 

standstill; inert, without will-power, a prey 
to self-terror and self-disgust. There, in the 
emptiness of his life, rose the great wind 
which issued from the abyss; the vertigo of 
death. 

Tolstoy told of these terrible years at a later 
period, when he was newly escaped from the 
abyss. 2 

"I was not fifty," he said; "I loved; I was 
loved; I had good children, a great estate, 
fame, health, and moral and physical vigour; 
I could reap or mow like any peasant; I used 
to work ten hours at a stretch without fatigue. 
Suddenly my life came to a standstill. I 
could breathe, eat, drink and sleep. But this 
was not to live. I had no desires left. I 
knew there was nothing to desire. I could 
not even wish to know the truth. The truth 
was that life is a piece of insanity. I had 
reached the abyss, and I saw clearly that there 
was nothing before me but death. I, a fortu- 
nate and healthy man, felt that I could not go 
on living. An irresistible force was urging 
me to rid myself of life. ... I will not 

2 In his Confessions (1879). 



THE CRISIS 135 

say that I wanted to kill myself. The force 
which was edging me out of life was some- 
thing stronger than myself; it was an aspira- 
tion, a desire like my old desire for life, but 
in an inverse sense. I had to humour, to de- 
ceive myself, lest I should give way to it too 
promptly. There I was, a happy man, — and 
I would hide away a piece of cord lest I 
should hang myself from the beam that ran 
between the cupboards of my room, where I 
was alone every night while undressing. I 
no longer took my gun out for a little shoot- 
ing, lest I should be tempted. 3 It seemed to 

3 See Anna Karenin. "And Levine, who had the love 
of a woman, and was the father of a family, put every 
kind of weapon away out of reach, as though he was 
afraid of yielding to the temptation of putting an end to 
his sufferings." This frame of mind was not peculiar 
to Tolstoy and his characters. Tolstoy was struck by the 
increasing number of suicides among the wealthy classes all 
over Europe, and in Russia more especially. He often 
alludes to the fact in such of his books as w^ere written 
about this period. It was as though a great wave of 
neurasthenia had swept across Europe in 1880, drowning 
its thousands of victims. Those who w r ere young men at 
the time will remember it ; and for them Tolstoy's record 
of this human experience will have a historic value. He 
has written the secret tragedy of a generation. 



136 TOLSTOY 

me that life was a dreary farce, which was be- 
ing played out before my eyes. Forty years 
of work, of trouble, of progress, only to find 
that there is nothing! Nothing! Nothing 
will remain of me but putrescence and worms. 
. . . One can live only while one is in- 
toxicated with life; but the moment the in- 
toxication is over one sees that all is merely 
deceit, a clumsy fraud. . . . My family 
and art were no longer enough to satisfy me. 
My family consisted of unhappy creatures 
like myself. Art is a mirror to life. When 
life no longer means anything it is no longer 
amusing to use the mirror. And the worst 
of it was, I could not resign myself — I was 
like a man lost in a forest, who is seized with 
horror because he is lost, and who runs hither 
and thither and cannot stop : although he 
knows that at every step he is straying fur- 
ther." 

Salvation came from the people. Tolstoy 
had always had for them "a strange affection, 
absolutely genuine," 4 which the repeated ex- 
periences of his social disillusions were power- 

4 Confessions. 



THE CRISIS 187 

less to shake. Of late years he, like Levine, 
had drawn very near to them. 5 He began to 
ponder concerning these millions of beings 
who were excluded from the narrow circle of 
the learned, the rich, and the idle who killed 
themselves, endeavoured to forget themselves, 
or, like himself, were basely prolonging a 
hopeless life. He asked himself why these 
millions of men and women escaped this de- 
spair: why they did not kill themselves. He 
then perceived that they were living not by 
the light of reason, but without even thinking 
of reason; they were living by faith. What 
was this faith which knew nothing of reason? 
"Faith is the energy of life. One cannot 
live without faith. The ideas of religion 

5 His portraits of this period betray this plebeian ten- 
dency. A painting by Kramskoy (1873) represents Tol- 
stoy in a moujik's blouse, with bowed head: it resembles 
a German Christ. The forehead is growing bare at the 
temples; the cheeks are lined and bearded. — In another 
portrait, dated 1881, he has the look of a respectable 
artisan in his Sunday clothes : the hair cut short, the beard 
and whiskers spread out on either side; the face looks 
much wider below than above; the eyebrows are con- 
tracted, the eyes gloomy ; the wide nostrils have a dog-like 
appearance; the ears are enormous. 



138 TOLSTOY 

were elaborated in the infinite remoteness of 
human thought. The replies given by faith 
to Life the sphinx contain the deepest wisdom 
of humanity." 

Is it enough, then, to be acquainted with 
those formulae of wisdom recorded in the 
volume of religion? No, for faith is not a 
science; faith is an act; it has no meaning un- 
less it is lived. The disgust which Tolstoy 
felt at the sight of rich and right-thinking 
people, for whom faith was merely a kind of 
"epicurean consolation," threw him definitely 
among the simple folk who alone lived lives 
in agreement with their faith. 

"And he understood that the life of the 
labouring people was life itself, and that the 
meaning to be attributed to that life was 
truth." 

But how become a part of the people and 
share its faith? It is not enough to know that 
others are in the right; it does not depend 
upon ourselves whether we are like them. 
We pray to God in vain; in vain we stretch 
our eager arms toward Him. God flies. 
Where shall He be found? 



THE CRISIS 139 

But one day grace descended: 

"One day of early spring I was alone in 
the forest, listening to its sounds. ... I 
was thinking of my distress during the last 
three years; of my search for God; of my 
perpetual oscillations from joy to despair. 
. , . And I suddenly saw that I used to 
live only when I used to believe in God. At 
the very thought of Him the delightful waves 
of life stirred in me. Everything around me 
grew full of life ; everything received a mean- 
ing. But the moment I no longer believed 
life suddenly ceased. 

"Then what am I still searching for? a 
voice cried within me. For Him, without 
whom man cannot live! To know God and 
to live — it is the same thing! For God is 
Life. . . . 

"Since then this light has never again de- 
serted me." 6 

He was saved. God had appeared to 
him. 7 

6 Confessions. 

7 To tell the truth — not for the first time. The young 
volunteer in the Caucasus, the officer at Sebastopol, 



140 TOLSTOY 

But as he was not a Hindu mystic, to whom 
ecstasy suffices; as to the dreams of the 
Asiatic was added the thirst for reason and 

Olenin of the Cossacksj Prince Andrei, and Pierre Be- 
soukhov, in War and Peace, had had similar visions. 
But Tolstoy was so enthusiastic that each time he discov- 
ered God he believed it was for the first time; that 
previously there had been nothing but night and the void. 
He saw nothing of his past but its shadows and its shames. 
We who, through reading his Journal, know better than 
he himself the story of his heart, know also how pro- 
foundly religious was that heart, even when he was most 
astray. But he himself confesses in a passage in the 
preface to the Criticism of Dogmatic Theology: "God! 
God! I have erred; I have sought the truth where I 
should not have sought it; and I knew that I erred. I 
flattered my evil passions, knowing them to be evil; but 
I never forgot Thee. I was always conscious of Thee, 
even when I went astray" The crisis of 1878-79 was 
only more violent than the rest ; perhaps under the influ- 
ence of repeated loss and the advance of age; its only 
novelty was that the image of God, instead of vanishing 
and leaving no trace when once the flame of ecstasy flick- 
ered out, remained with him, and the penitent, warned 
by past experience, hastened to "walk in the light while 
he had the light," and to deduce from his faith a whole 
system of life, not that he had not already tried to do so. 
(Remember the Rules of Life written when he was a stu- 
dent.) But at fifty years of age there was less likelihood 
that his passions would divert him from his path. 



THE CRISIS 141 

the need of action of the Occidental, he was 
moved to translate his revelation into terms 
of practical faith, and to draw from the holy 
life the rules of daily existence. Without 
any previous bias, and sincerely wishing to be- 
lieve in the beliefs of his own flesh and blood, 
he began by studying the doctrine of the 
Orthodox Church, of which he was a mem- 
ber. 8 In order to become more intimately a 
part of that body he submitted for three years 
to all its ceremonies ; confessing himself, com- 
municating; not presuming to judge such 
matters as shocked him, inventing explana- 
tions for what he found obscure or incompre- 
hensible, uniting himself, through and in their 
faith, with all those whom he loved, whether 
living or dead, and always cherishing the 
hope that at a certain moment "love would 
open to him the gates of truth." But it was 
all useless: his reason and his heart revolted. 
Such ceremonies as baptism and communion 
appeared to him scandalous. When he was 

8 The sub-title of the Confessions is Introduction to the 
Criticism of Dogmatic Theology and the Examination of 
the Christian Doctrine. 



142 TOLSTOY 

forced to repeat that the host was the true 
body and true blood of Christ, "he felt as 
though a knife were plunged into his heart." 
But it was not the dogmas which raised be- 
tween the Church and himself an insurmount- 
able wall, but the practical questions, and in 
especial two : the hateful and mutual intoler- 
ance of the Churches 9 and the sanction, 
formal or tacit, of homicide: of war and of 
capital punishment. 

So he broke loose, and the rupture was the 
more violent in that for three years he had 
suppressed his faculty of thought. He 
walked delicately no longer. Angrily and 
violently he trampled underfoot the religion 
which the day before he was still persistently 
practising. In his Criticism of Dogmatic 
Theology (1870-1881) he termed it not only 
an " insanity, but a conscious and interested 
lie." 10 He contrasted it with the New 

9 "I, who beheld the truth in the unity of love, was 
struck with the fact that religion itself destroyed that 
which it sought to produce." (Confessions.) 

10 "And I am convinced that the teaching of the Church 
is in theory a crafty and evil lie, and in practice a con- 
coction of gross superstitions and witchcraft, under which 



THE CRISIS 143 

Testament, in his Concordance and Trans- 
lation of the Four Gospels (1881-83). 
Finally, upon the Gospel he built his faith 
{What my Faith Consists in, 1883). 

It all resides in these words : 

"I believe in the doctrine of the Christ. 
I believe that happiness is possible on earth 
only when all men shall accomplish it." 

Its corner-stone is the Sermon on the 
Mount, whose essential teaching Tolstoy ex- 
presses in five commandments: 

"1. Do not be angry. 

"2. Do not commit adultery. 

"3. Do not take oaths. 

"4. Do not resist evil by evil. 

"5. Be no man's enemy." 

This is the negative part of the doctrine; 
the positive portion is contained in this single 
commandment: 

"Love God, and thy neighbour as thy- 
self." 

"Christ has said that he who shall have 
broken the least of these commandments will 

the meaning of the Christian doctrine absolutely disap- 
pears." {Reply to the Holy Synod, April 4-17, 1901.) 



144 TOLSTOY 

hold the lowest place in the kingdom of 
heaven. " 

And Tolstoy adds naively: 

"Strange as it may seem, I have been 
obliged, after eighteen centuries, to discover 
these rules as a novelty." 

Does Tolstoy believe in the divinity of 
Christ? By no means. In what quality does 
he invoke him? As the greatest of the line 
of sages — Brahma, Buddha, Lao-Tse, Con- 
fucius, Zoroaster, Isaiah — who have revealed 
to man the true happiness to which he aspires, 
and the way which he must follow. 11 Tol- 

11 As he grew older, this feeling of the unity of re- 
ligious truth throughout human history — and of the kin- 
ship of Christ with the other sages, from Buddha down 
to Kant and Emerson — grew more and more accentuated, 
until in his later years Tolstoy denied that he had "any 
predilection for Christianity." Of the greatest importance 
in this connection is a letter written between July 27 and 
August 4, 1909, to the painter Jan Styka, and recently 
reproduced in Le Theosophe (January 16, 191 1). Ac- 
cording to his habit, Tolstoy, full of his new conviction, 
was a little inclined to forget his former state of mind 
and the starting-point of his religious crisis, which was 
purely Christian: 

"The doctrine of Jesus," he writes, "is to me only one 
of the beautiful doctrines which we have received from 



THE CRISIS 145 

stoy is the disciple of these great religious 
creators, of these Hindu, Chinese, and He- 
brew demi-gods and prophets. He defends 
them, as he knows how to defend; defends 
them by attacking those whom he calls "the 
Scribes" and "the Pharisees"; by attacking 
the established Churches and the representa- 
tives of arrogant science, or rather of "scien- 
tific philosophism." Not that he appealed 
from reason to revelation. Once escaped 
from the period of distress described in his 
Confessions, he remained essentially a be- 

the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Israel, Hindostan, 
China, Greece. The two great principles of Jesus: the 
love of God, that is, of absolute perfection, and the love 
of one's neighbour, that is, of all men without distinction, 
have been preached by all the sages of the world: 
Krishna, Buddha, Lao-Tse, Confucius, Socrates, Plato, 
Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and, among the moderns, 
Rousseau, Pascal, Kant, Emerson, Channing, and many 
others. Truth, moral and religious, is everywhere and 
always the same. ... I have no predilection for 
Christianity. If I have been particularly attracted by the 
teaching of Jesus, it is (i) because I was born and have 
lived among Christians, and (2) because I have found a 
great spiritual joy in disengaging the pure doctrine from 
the astonishing falsifications created by the Churches." 



146 TOLSTOY 

liever in Reason; one might indeed say a 
mystic of Reason. 

"In the beginning was the Word," he says, 
with St. John; "the Word, Logos, that is, 
Reason." 12 

A book of his entitled Life (1887) bears 
as epigraph the famous lines of Pascal: 13 

"Man is nothing but a reed, the most feeble 
thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. 
• . . All our dignity resides in thought. 
. . . Let us then strive to think well : that 
is the principle of morality." 

The whole book, moreover, is nothing but 
a hymn to Reason. 

It is true that Tolstoy's Reason is not the 
scientific reason, the restricted reason "which 
takes the part for the whole and physical life 
for the whole of life," but the sovereign law 
which rules the life of man, "the law accord- 

12 Tolstoy protests that he does not attack true science, 
which is modest and knows its limits. (Life, chap. iv. 
There is a French version by Countess Tolstoy.) 

13 Tolstoy often read the Pensees during the period of 
this crisis, which preceded the Confessions. He speaks 
of Pascal in his letters to Fet (April 14, 1877, August 3, 
1879), recommending his friend to read the Pensees. 



THE CRISIS 147 

ing to which reasonable beings, that is men, 
must of necessity live their lives." 

"It is a law analogous to those which regu- 
late the nutrition and the reproduction of the 
animal, the growth and the blossoming of 
herb and of tree, the movement of the earth 
and the planets. It is only in the accom- 
plishment of this law, in the submission of our 
animal nature to the law of reason, with a view 
to acquiring goodness, that we truly live. 
. . . Reason cannot be defined, and we 
have no need to define it, for not only do we 
all know it, but we know nothing else. . . . 
All that man knows he knows by means of 
reason and not by faith. . . . 14 True life 
commences only at the moment when reason is 
manifested. The only real life is the life of 
reason." 

14 In a letter Upon Reason, written on November 26, 
1894, t0 Baroness X (reproduced in The Revolutionaries, 
1906), Tolstoy says the same thing: 

"Man has received directly from God one sole instru- 
ment by which he may know himself and his relations 
with the world: there is no other means. This instru- 
ment is reason. Reason comes from God. It is not only 
the highest human quality, but the only means by which 
the truth is to be known." 



148 TOLSTOY 

Then what is the visible life, our individual 
existence? "It is not our life," says Tolstoy, 
"for it does not depend upon ourselves. 

"Our animal activity is accomplished with- 
out ourselves. . . . Humanity has done 
with the idea of life considered as an indi- 
vidual existence. The negation of the possi- 
bility of individual good remains an un- 
changeable truth for every man of our period 
who is endowed with reason." 

Then follows a long series of postulates, 
which I will not here discuss, but which show 
how Tolstoy was obsessed by the idea of 
reason. It was in fact a passion, no less 
blind or jealous than the other passions which 
had possessed him during the earlier part 
of his life. One fire was flickering out, the 
other was kindling; or rather it was al- 
ways the same fire, but fed with a different 
fuel. 

A fact which adds to the resemblance be- 
tween the "individual" passions and this "ra- 
tional" passion is that neither those nor this 
can be satisfied with loving. They seek to 
act; they long for realisation. 



THE CRISIS 149 

"Christ has said, we must not speak, but 



act." 



And what is the activity of reason? — Love. 

"Love is the only reasonable activity of 
man; love is the most reasonable and most 
enlightened state of the soul. All that man 
needs is that nothing shall obscure the sun 
of reason, for that alone can help him to grow. 
. . . Love is the actual good, the supreme 
good which resolves all the contradictions of 
life; which not only dissipates the fear of 
death, but impels man to sacrifice himself to 
others : for there is no love but that which en- 
ables a man to give his life for those he loves : 
love is not worthy of the name unless it is a 
sacrifice of self. And the true love can only 
be realised when man understands that it is not 
possible for him to acquire individual happi- 
ness. It is then that all the streams of his life 
go to nourish the noble graft of the true love : 
and this graft borrows for its increase all the 
energies of the wild stock of animal individu- 
ality. . . ," 15 

Thus Tolstoy did not come to the refuge of 

15 Life, chaps, xxii.-xxv. As in the case of most of 



150 TOLSTOY 

faith like an exhausted river which loses it- 
self among the sands. He brought to it the 
torrent of impetuous energies amassed during 
a full and virile life. This we shall presently 
see. 

This impassioned faith, in which Love and 
Reason are united in a close embrace, has 
found its most dignified expression in the 
famous reply to the Holy Synod which ex- 
communicated him : 16 

"I believe in God, who for me is Love, the 
Spirit, the Principle of all things. I believe 
that He is in me as I am in Him. I believe 
that the will of God has never been more 
clearly expressed than in the teaching of the 
man Christ; but we cannot regard Christ as 
God and address our prayers to him without 
committing the greatest sacrilege. I believe 
that the true happiness of man consists in the 

these quotations, I am expressing the sense of several chap- 
ters in a few characteristic phrases. 

16 I hope later, when the complete works of Tolstoy 
have been published, to study the various shades of this 
religious idea, which has certainly evolved in respect of 
many points, notably in respect of the conception of future 
life. 



THE CRISIS 151 

accomplishment of the will of God ; I believe 
that the will of God is that every man shall 
love his fellows and do unto them always as he 
would they should do unto him, which con- 
tains, as the Bible says, all the law and the 
prophets. I believe that the meaning of life 
for each one of us is only to increase the love 
within him ; I believe that this development of 
our power of loving will reward us in this 
life with a happiness which will increase day 
by day, and with a more perfect felicity in 
the other world. I believe that this increase 
of love will contribute, more than any other 
factor, to founding the kingdom of God upon 
earth; that is, to replacing an organisation of 
life in which division, deceit, and violence are 
omnipotent, by a new order in which concord, 
truth, and brotherhood will reign. I believe 
that we have only one means of growing richer 
in love: namely, our prayers. Not public 
prayer in the temple, which Christ has form- 
ally reproved (Matt. vi. 5-13), but the prayer 
of which he himself has given as an example; 
the solitary prayer which confirms in us the 
consciousness of the meaning of our life and 



152 TOLSTOY 

the feeling that we depend solely upon the will 
of God. ... I believe in life eternal; I 
believe that man is rewarded according to his 
acts, here and everywhere, now and for ever. 
I believe all these things so firmly that at my 
age, on the verge of the tomb, I have often 
to make an effort not to pray for the death 
of my body, that is, my birth into a new life." 17 

17 From a translation in the Temps for May i, 1901. 



CHAPTER XI 

REALITY 



CHAPTER XI 

REALITY 

He thought he had arrived in port, had 
achieved the haven in which his unquiet soul 
might take its repose. He was only at the be- 
ginning of a new period of activity. 

A winter passed in Moscow (his family 
duties having obliged him to follow his family 
thither), 1 and the taking of the census, in 
which he contrived to lend a hand, gave him 
the occasion to examine at first hand the 
poverty of a great city. The impression 
produced upon him was terrible. On the 
evening of the day when he first came into 
contact with this hidden plague of civilisa- 
tion, while relating to a friend what he had 
seen, "he began to shout, to weep, and to 
brandish his fist." 

1 "I had hitherto passed my whole life away from the 
city." {What shall we dof) 

155 



156 TOLSTOY 

"People can't live like that!" he cried, sob- 
bing. "It cannot be! It cannot be!" He 
fell into a state of terrible despair, which did 
not leave him for months. Countess Tolstoy 
wrote to him on the 3rd of March, 1882: 

"You used to say, 'I used to want to hang 
myself because of my lack of faith.' Now 
you have faith: why then are you so un- 
happy?" 

Because he had not the sanctimonious, self- 
satisfied faith of the Pharisee; because he had 
not the egoism of the mystic, who is too com- 
pletely absorbed in the matter of his own sal- 
vation to think of the salvation of others; 2 

2 Tolstoy has many times expressed his antipathy for 
the "ascetics, who live for themselves only, apart from 
their fellows." He puts them in the same class as the 
conceited and ignorant revolutionists, "who pretend to do 
good to others without knowing what it is that they them- 
selves need. ... I love these two categories of men 
with the same love, but I hate their doctrines with the 
same hate. The only doctrine is that which orders a 
constant activity, an existence which responds to the 
aspirations of the soul and endeavours to realise the hap- 
piness of others. Such is the Christian doctrine. Equally 
remote from religious quietism and the arrogant preten- 
sions of the revolutionists, who seek to transform the 



REALITY 157 

because he knew love; because he could no 
longer forget the miserable creatures he had 
seen, and in the passionate tenderness of his 
heart he felt as though he were responsible 
for their sufferings and their abjectness; they 
were the victims of that civilisation in whose 
privileges he shared; of that monstrous idol to 
which an elect and superior class was always 
sacrificing millions of human beings. To ac- 
cept the benefit of such crimes was to become 
an accomplice. His conscience would have 
given him no repose had he not denounced 
them. 

What shall we do? (1884-86) is the expres- 
sion of this second crisis; a crisis far more 
tragic than the first, and far richer in conse- 
quences. What were the personal religious 
sufferings of Tolstoy in this ocean of human 
wretchedness — of material misery, not misery 
created by the mind of a self-wearied idler? 
It was impossible for him to shut his eyes to 
it, and having seen it he could but strive, at 

world without knowing in what real happiness consists." 
(Letters to a friend, published in the volume entitled 
Cruel Pleasures, 1895.) 



158 TOLSTOY 

any cost, to prevent it. Alas ! was such a thing 
possible? 

An admirable portrait, 3 which I cannot look 
at without emotion, tells us plainly what suf- 
fering Tolstoy was then enduring. It shows 
him facing the camera ; seated, with his arms 
crossed; he is wearing a moujik's blouse. He 
looks overwhelmed. His hair is still black, 
but his moustache is already grey, and his 
long beard and whiskers are quite white. A 
double furrow traces symmetrical lines in the 
large, comely face. There is so much good- 
ness, such tenderness, in the great dog-like 
muzzle, in the eyes that regard you with so 
frank, so clear, so sorrowful a look. They 
read your mind so surely! They pity and im- 
plore. The face is furrowed and bears traces 
of suffering; there are heavy creases beneath 
the eyes. He has wept. But he is strong, and 
ready for the fight. 

His logic was heroic: 

"I am always astonished by these words, so 
often repeated: 'Yes, it is well enough in 

3 A daguerreotype of 1885, reproduced in What shall 
we dof in the complete French edition. 



REALITY 159 

theory, but how would it be in practice?' As 
if theory consisted in pretty words, necessary 
for conversation, and was not in the least some- 
thing to which practice should conform! 
When I come to understand a matter on which 
I have reflected, I cannot do otherwise than 
as I have understood." 4 

He begins by describing, with photographic 
exactitude, the poverty of Moscow as he has 
seen it in the course of his visits to the poorer 
quarters or the night-shelters. 5 

He is convinced that money is not the power, 
as he had at first supposed, which will save 
these unhappy creatures, all more or less 
tainted by the corruption of the cities. Then 
he seeks bravely for the source of the evil; 
unwinding link upon link of the terrible chain 
of responsibility. First come the rich, with 
the contagion of their accursed luxury, which 
entices and depraves the soul. 6 Then comes 

4 What shall we dof 

5 All the first part of the book (the first fifteen chap- 
ters). 

6 "The true cause of poverty is the accumulation of 
riches in the hands of those who do not produce, and are 
concentrated in the cities. The wealthy classes are gath- 



160 TOLSTOY 

the universal seduction of life without labour. 
Then the State, that murderous entity, created 
by the violent in order that they might for 
their own profit despoil and enslave the rest 
of humanity. Then the Church, an accom- 
plice; science and art, accomplices. How is 
a man to oppose this army of evil? In the 
first place, by refusing to join it. By refusing 
to share in the exploitation of humanity. By 
renouncing wealth and ownership of the soil, 7 
and by refusing to serve the State. 

ered together in the cities in order to enjoy and to defend 
themselves. And the poor man comes to feed upon ^he 
crumbs of the rich. He is drawn thither by the snare of 
easy gain : by peddling, begging, swindling, or in the serv- 
ice of immorality." 

7 "The pivot of the evil is property. Property is merely 
the means of enjoying the labour of others." Property, 
he says again, is that which is not ours: it represents 
other people. "Man calls his wife, his children, his 
slaves, his goods his property, but reality shows him his 
error; and he must renounce his property or suffer and 
cause others to suffer." 

Tolstoy was already urging the Russian revolution: 
"For three or four years now men have cursed us on the 
highway and called us sluggards and skulkers. The 
hatred and contempt of the downtrodden people are be- 
coming more intense." (What shall we do?) 



REALITY 161 

But this is not sufficient. One "must not 
lie," nor be afraid of the truth. One "must 
repent," and uproot the pride that is implanted 
by education. Finally, one must work with 
one's hands. "Thou shalt win thy bread in 
the sweat of thy brow" is the first command- 
ment and the most essential. 8 And Tolstoy, 
replying in advance to the ridicule of the elect, 
maintains that physical labour does not in any 
way decrease the energy of the intellect; but 
that, on the contrary, it increases it, and that 
it responds to the normal demand of nature. 
Health can only gain thereby; art will gain 
even more. But what is more important still, 
it will re-establish the union of man with man. 

In his subsequent works, Tolstoy was to 
complete these precepts of moral hygiene. 

8 The peasant-revolutionist Bondarev would have had 
this law recognised as a universal obligation. Tolstoy- 
was then subject to his influence, as also to that of an- 
other peasant, Sutayev. — "During the whole of my life 
two Russian thinkers have had a great moral influence 
over me, have enriched my mind, and have elucidated for 
me my own conception of the world. They were two 
peasants, Sutayev and Bondarev." {What shall we do?) 

In the same book Tolstoy gives us a portrait of Su- 
tayev, and records a conversation with him. 



162 TOLSTOY 

He was anxious to achieve the cure of the 
soul, to replenish its energy, by proscribing the 
vicious pleasures which deaden the con- 
science 9 and the cruel pleasures which kill it. 10 
He himself set the example. In 1884, he 
sacrificed his most deeply rooted passion: his 
love of the chase. 11 He practised abstinence, 
which strengthens the will. So an athlete may 
subject himself to some painful discipline that 
he may grapple with it and conquer. 

What shall we do? marks the first stage of 
the difficult journey upon which Tolstoy was 
about to embark, quitting the relative peace 
of religious meditation for the social mael- 
strom. It was then that the twenty years' war 
commenced which the old prophet of Yasnaya 

9 Vicious Pleasures, or in the French translation Alco- 
hol and Tobacco, 1895. 

10 Cruel Pleasures {the Meat-eaters; War; Hunting), 

1895. 

11 The sacrifice was difficult ; the passion inherited. He 
was not sentimental ; he never felt much pity for animals. 
For him all things fell into three planes: "1. Reasoning 
beings; 2. animals and plants ; 3. inanimate matter." He 
was not without a trace of native cruelty. He relates the 
pleasure he felt in watching the struggles of a wolf which 
he killed. Remorse was of later growth. 



REALITY 16S 

Polyana waged in the name of the Gospel, 
single-handed, outside the limits of all parties, 
and condemning all; a war upon the crimes 
and lies of civilisation. 



CHAPTER XII 

ART AND CONSCIENCE 



CHAPTER XII 

ART AND CONSCIENCE 

This moral revolution of Tolstoy's met with 
little sympathy from his immediate world; his 
family and his relatives were appalled by it. 

For a long time Countess Tolstoy had been 
anxiously watching the progress of a symptom 
against which she had fought in vain. As 
early as 1874 srie had seen with indignation 
the amount of time and energy which her hus- 
band spent in connection with the schools. 

"This spelling-book, this arithmetic, this 
grammar — I feel a contempt for them, and I 
cannot assume a semblance of interest in 
them." 

Matters were very different when pedagogy 
was succeeded by religion. So hostile was 
the Countess's reception of the first confidences 
of the Convert that Tolstoy felt obliged to 
apologise when he spoke of God in his letters : 

167 



168 TOLSTOY 

"Do not be vexed, as you so often are when 
I mention God; I cannot help it, for He is 
the very basis of my thought." 1 

The Countess was touched, no doubt; she 
tried to conceal her impatience; but she did 
not understand; and she watched her husband 
anxiously. 

"His eyes are strange and fixed. He 
scarcely speaks. He does not seem to belong 
to this world." 

She feared he was ill. 

"Leo is always working, by what he tells 
me. Alas ! he is writing religious discussions 
of some kind. He reads and he ponders un- 
til he gives himself the headache, and all this 
to prove that the Church is not in agreement 
with the teaching of the Gospel. He will 
hardly find a dozen people in Russia whom 
the matter could possibly interest. But there 
is nothing to be done. I have only one hope : 
that he will be done with it all the sooner, 
and that it will pass off like an illness." 

The illness did not pass away. The situa- 
tion between husband and wife became more 

1 The summer of 1878. 



ART AND CONSCIENCE 169 

and more painful. They loved one another; 
each had a profound esteem for the other; but 
it was impossible for them to understand one 
another. They strove to make mutual con- 
cessions, which became — as is usually the case 
— a form of mutual torment. Tolstoy forced 
himself to follow his family to Moscow. He 
wrote in his Journal: 

"The most painful month of my life. Get- 
ting settled in Moscow. All are settling 
down. But when, then, will they begin to 
live? All this, not in order to live, but be- 
cause other folk do the same. Unhappy peo- 
ple!" 2 

During these days the Countess wrote: 

"Moscow. We shall have been here a 
month to-morrow. The first two weeks I 
cried every day, for Leo was not only sad, but 
absolutely broken. He did not sleep, he did 
not eat, at times even he wept; I thought I 
should go mad." 3 

For a time they had to live their lives apart. 
They begged one another's pardon for caus- 

2 October 8, 1881. Vie et (Euvre. 
5 October 14. Vie et (Euvre. 



170 TOLSTOY 

ing mutual suffering. We see how they 
always loved each other. He writes to 
her: 

"You say, 'I love you, and you do not need 
my love.' It is the only thing I do need. 
. . . Your love causes me more gladness 
than anything in the world." 

But as soon as they are together again the 
same discord occurs. The Countess cannot 
share this religious mania which is now im- 
pelling Tolstoy to study Hebrew with a 
rabbi. 

"Nothing else interests him any longer. 
He is wasting his energies in foolishness. I 
cannot conceal my impatience." 4 

She writes to him : 

"It can only sadden me that such intellectual 
energies should spend themselves in chopping 
wood, heating the samovar, and cobbling 
boots." 

She adds, with affectionate, half-ironical 
humour of a mother who watches a child play- 
ing a foolish game: 

"Finally, I have pacified myself with the 
4 1882. 



ART AND CONSCIENCE 171 

Russian proverb: 'Let the child play as he 
will, so long as he doesn't cry.' " 5 

Before the letter was posted she had a men- 
tal vision of her husband reading these lines, 
his kind, frank eyes saddened by their ironical 
tone; and she re-opened the letter, in an im- 
pulse of affection: 

"Quite suddenly I saw you so clearly, and 
I felt such a rush of tenderness for you! 
There is something in you so wise, so naive, so 
perserving, and it is all lit up by the radiance 
of goodness, and that look of yours which goes 
straight to the soul. ... It is something 
that belongs to you alone." 

In this manner these two creatures who 
loved also tormented one another and were 
straightway stricken with wretchedness be- 
cause of the pain they had the power to in- 
flict but not the power to avoid. A situation 
with no escape, which lasted for nearly thirty 
years; which was to be terminated only by 
the flight across the steppes, in a moment of 
aberration, of the ancient Lear, with death 
already upon him. 

5 October 23, 1884. Vie et (Euvre. 



172 TOLSTOY 

Critics have not sufficiently remarked the 
moving appeal to women which terminates 
What shall we do? Tolstoy had no sympathy 
for modern feminism. 6 But of the type whom 
he calls "the mother-woman," the woman who 
knows the real meaning of life, he speaks in 
terms of pious admiration; he pronounces a 
magnificent eulogy of her pains and her joys, 
of pregnancy and maternity, of the terrible 
sufferings, the years without rest, the invisible, 
exhausting travail for which no reward is ex- 
pected, and of that beatitude which floods the 
soul at the happy issue from labour, when the 
body has accomplished the Law. He draws 
the portrait of the valiant wife who is a help, 
not an obstacle, to her husband. She knows 
that "the vocation of man is the obscure, lonely 
sacrifice, unrewarded, for the life of others." 

"Such a woman will not only not encourage 

6 "The so-called right of women is merely the desire to 
participate in the imaginary labours of the wealthy classes, 
with a view to enjoying the fruit of the labour of others 
and to live a life that satisfies the sensual appetites. No 
genuine labourer's wife demands the right to share her 
husband's work in the mines or in the fields." 



ART AND CONSCIENCE 173 

her husband in factitious and meretricious 
work whose only end is to profit by and enjoy 
the labour of others ; but she will regard such 
activity with horror and disgust, as a possible 
seduction for her children. She will demand 
of her companion a true labour, which will 
call for energy and does not fear danger. 
. . . She knows that the children, the gen- 
erations to come, are given to men as their 
holiest vision, and that she exists to further, 
with all her being, this sacred task. She will 
develop in her children and in her husband 
the strength of sacrifice. . . . It is such 
women who rule men and serve as their 
guiding star. . . . O mother-women ! In 
your hands is the salvation of the world !" 7 

This appeal of a voice of supplication, 
which still has hope — will it not be heard? 

A few years later the last glimmer of hope 
was dead. 

"Perhaps you will not believe me; but you 
cannot imagine how isolated I am, nor in what 

7 These are the last lines of What shall we do? They 
are dated the 14th of February, 1886. 



174 TOLSTOY 

a degree my veritable / is despised and dis- 
regarded by all those about me." 8 

If those who loved him best so misunder- 
stood the grandeur of the moral transforma- 
tion which Tolstoy was undergoing, one could 
not look for more penetration or greater re- 
spect in others. Tourgenev with whom he 
had sought to effect a reconciliation, rather 
in a spirit of Christian humility than because 
his feelings towards him had suffered any 
change, 9 said ironically of Tolstoy: "I pity 
him greatly; but after all, as the French say, 
every one kills his own fleas in his own way." 10 

A few years later, when on the point of 
death, he wrote to Tolstoy the well-known 
letter in which he prayed "his friend, the 

8 A letter to a friend, published under the tide of Pro- 
fession of Faith, in the volume entitled Cruel Pleasures, 

1895. 

9 The reconciliation took place in the spring of 1878. 
Tolstoy wrote to Tourgenev asking his pardon. Tour- 
genev went to Yasnaya Polyana in August, 1878. Tol- 
stoy returned his visit in July, 1881. Every one was 
struck with the change in his manner, his gentleness and 
his modesty. He was "as though regenerated." 

10 Letter to Polonski (quoted by Birukov). 



ART AND CONSCIENCE 175 

great writer of the Russian world," to "re- 
turn to literature." " 

All the artists of Europe shared the anxiety 
and the prayer of the dying Tourgenev. 
Melchior de Vogue, at the end of his study 
of Tolstoy, written in 1886, made a portrait 
of the writer in peasant costume, handling 
a drill, the pretext for an eloquent apos- 
trophe : 

"Craftsman, maker of masterpieces, this is 
not your tool! . . . Our tool is the pen; 
our field, the human soul, which we must 
shelter and nourish. Let us remind you of 
the words of a Russian peasant, of the first 
printer of Moscow, when he was sent back 
to the plough : 'It is not my business to sow 
grains of corn, but to sow the seed of the spirit 
broadcast in the world.' " 

As though Tolstoy had ever renounced his 
vocation as a sower of the seed of the mind! 
In the Introduction to What I Believe he 
wrote : 

"I believe that my life, my reason,, my light, 

11 Letter to Bougival, June 28, 1883. 



176 TOLSTOY 

is given me exclusively for the purpose of 
enlightening my fellows. I believe that my 
knowledge of the truth is a talent which is 
lent me for this object; that this talent is a 
fire which is a fire only when it is being con- 
sumed. I believe that the only meaning of my 
life is that I should live it only by the light 
within me, and should hold that light on high 
before men that they may see it." 12 

But this light, this fire "which was a fire 
only when it was being consumed," was a 
cause of anxiety to the majority of Tolstoy's 
fellow-artists. The more intelligent could not 
but suspect that there was a great risk that 
their art would be the first prey of the con- 
flagration. They professed to believe that the 
whole art of literature was menaced; that the 

12 We find that M. de Vogue, in the reproach which he 
addressed to Tolstoy, unconsciously used the phrases of 
Tolstoy himself. "Rightly or wrongly," he said, "for our 
chastisement perhaps, we have received from heaven that 
splendid and essential evil: thought. . . . To throw 
down this cross is an impious revolt." (Le Roman Russe, 
1886.) Now Tolstoy wrote to his aunt, the Countess 
A. A. Tolstoy, in 1883 : "Each of us must bear his cross. 
. . . Mine is the travail of the idea; evil, full of pride 
and seductiveness." (Letters.) 



ART AND CONSCIENCE 177 

Russian, like Prospero, was burying for ever 
his magic ring with its power of creative 
illusion. 

Nothing was further from the truth ; and I 
hope to show that so far from ruining his art 
Tolstoy was awakening forces which had lain 
fallow, and that his religious faith, instead of 
killing his artistic genius, regenerated it com- 
pletely. 



CHAPTER XIII 

SCIENCE AND ART 



I 



CHAPTER XIII 

SCIENCE AND ART 

IT is a singular fact that in speaking of 
Tolstoy's ideas concerning science and art, the 
most important of the books in which these 
ideas are expressed — namely, What shall 
we do? (1884-86) — is commonly ignored. 
There, for the first time, Tolstoy fights the bat- 
tle between art and science; and none of the 
following conflicts was to surpass the violence 
of their first encounter. It is a matter for 
surprise that no one, during the assaults which 
have been recently delivered in France upon 
the vanity of science and the intellectuals, has 
thought of referring to these pages. They 
constitute the most terrible attack ever penned 
against "the eunuchs of science" and "the cor- 
sairs of art"; against those intellectual castes 
which, having destroyed the old ruling castes 
of the Church, the State, and the Army, have 
installed themselves in their place, and, with- 

181 



182 TOLSTOY 

out being able or willing to perform any 
service of use to humanity, lay claim to a 
blind admiration and service, proclaiming as 
dogmas an impudent faith in science for the 
sake of science and in art for the sake of art 
— the lying mask which they seek to make 
their justification and the apology for their 
monstrous egoism and their emptiness. 

"Never make me say," continues Tol- 
stoy, "that I deny art or science. Not only 
do I not deny them; it is in their name 
that I seek to drive the thieves from the 
temple." 

"Science and art are as necessary as bread 
and water; even more necessary. . . . 
The true science is that of the true welfare of 
all human beings. The true art is the expres- 
sion of the knowledge of the true welfare of 
all men." 

And he praises those who, "since men have 
existed, have with the harp or the cymbal, by 
images or by words, expressed their struggle 
against duplicity, their sufferings in that 
struggle, their hope in the triumph of good, 
their despair at the triumph of evil, and the 



SCIENCE AND ART 183 

enthusiasm of their prophetic vision of the 
future." 

He then draws the character of the perfect 
artist, in a page burning with mystical and 
melancholy earnestness : 

"The activity of science and art is only 
fruitful when it arrogates no right to itself and 
considers only its duties. It is only because 
that activity is such as it is, because its essence 
is sacrifice, that humanity honours it. The 
men who are called to serve others by spiritual 
work always suffer in the accomplishment of 
that task; for the spiritual world is brought 
to birth only in suffering and torture. 
Sacrifice and suffering; such is the fate of 
the thinker and the artist, for his fate is the 
good of men. Men are unhappy ; they suffer ; 
they die; there is no time for him to stroll 
about, to amuse himself. The thinker or the 
artist never strays upon Olympian heights, as 
we are accustomed to think; he is always in a 
state of conflict, always in a state of emotion. 
He must decide and must say what will 
further the welfare of men, what will deliver 
them from suffering; and he has not decided 



184 TOLSTOY 

it, he has not said it; and to-morrow it will 
perhaps be too late, and he will die. . . . 
The man who is trained in an establishment 
in which artists and scientists are formed (to 
tell the truth, such places make destroyers of 
art and of science) ; the man who receives 
diplomas and a pension — he will not be an 
artist or a thinker; but he who would be 
happy not to think, not to express what is im- 
planted in his mind, yet cannot refrain from 
thought and self-expression: for he is carried 
along by two invisible forces : his inner need 
and his love of men. There are no artists who 
are fat,, lovers of life, and satisfied with them- 
selves." 1 

This splendid page, which throws a tragic 
light upon the genius of Tolstoy, was written 
under the immediate stress of the suffering 
caused him by the poverty of Moscow, and 
under the conviction that science and art were 
the accomplices of the entire modern system 
of social inequality and hypocritical brutality. 
This conviction he was never to lose. But the 

1 What shall we dof p. 378-9. 



SCIENCE AND ART 185 

impression of his first encounter with the 
misery of the world slowly faded, and be- 
came less poignant; the wound healed, 2 and 
in none of his subsequent books do we re- 
cover the tremor of pain and of vengeful 
anger which vibrates in this; nowhere do we 
find this sublime profession of the faith of 
the artist who creates with his life-blood, this 
exaltation of the sacrifice and suffering 
"which are the lot of the thinker"; this dis- 
dain for Olympian art. Those of his later 
works which deal with the criticism of art 
will be found to treat the question from a 
standpoint at once more literary and less 
mystical; the problem of art is detached from 
the background of that human wretchedness 
of which Tolstoy could not think without los- 
ing his self-control, as on the night of his 

2 In time he even came to justify suffering — not only 
personal suffering, but the sufferings of others. "For the 
assuagement of the sufferings of others is the essence of 
the rational life. How then should the object of labour 
be an object of suffering for the labourer? It is as 
though the labourer were to say that an untilled field is a 
grief to him." {Life, chap, xxxiv.-xxxv. ) 



186 TOLSTOY 

visit to the night-shelter, when upon return- 
ing home he sobbed and cried aloud in des- 
peration. 

I do not mean to suggest that these didactic 
works are ever frigid. It is impossible for 
Tolstoy to be frigid. Until the end of his 
life he is the man who writes to Fet: 

"If he does not love his personages, even 
the least of them, then he must insult them 
in such a way as to make the heavens fall, 
or must mock at them until he splits his 
sides." 3 

He does not forget to do so, in his writings 
on art. The negative portion of this state- 
ment — brimming over with insults and sar- 
casms — is so vigorously expressed that it is the 
only part which has struck the artist. This 
method has so violently wounded the super- 
stitions and susceptibilities of the brother- 
hood that they inevitably see, in the enemy 
of their own art, the enemy of all art what- 
soever. But Tolstoy's criticism is never de- 

3 February 23, i860. Further Letters, pp. 19-20. It 
was for this reason that the "melancholy and dyspeptic" 
art of Tourgenev displeased him. 



SCIENCE AND ART 187 

void of the reconstructive element. He never 
destroys for the sake of destruction, but only 
to rebuild. In his modesty he does not even 
profess to build anything new; he merely de- 
fends Art, which was and ever shall be, from 
the false artists who exploit it and dishonour 
it. 

"True science and true art have always ex- 
isted and will always exist; it is impossible 
and useless to attack them," he wrote to me 
in 1887, m a letter which anticipated by more 
than ten years his famous criticism of art 
(What is Art?).* "All the evil of the day 
comes from the fact that so-called civilised 
people, together with the scientists and artists, 
form a privileged caste, like so many priests; 
and this caste has all the faults of all castes. 
It degrades and lowers the principle in vir- 
tue of which it was organised. What we in 
our world call the sciences and the arts is 

4 This letter (October 4, 1887) has been printed in the 
Cahiers de la Quinzaine, 1902, and in the Further Let- 
ters (Correspondence inedite), 1907. What is Art? ap- 
peared in 1897-98; but Tolstoy had been pondering the 
matter for more than fourteen years. 



188 TOLSTOY 

merely a gigantic humbug, a gross supersti- 
tion into which we commonly fall as soon 
as we free ourselves from the old supersti- 
tion of the Church. To keep safely to the 
road we ought to follow we must begin at 
the beginning — we must raise the cowl which 
keeps us warm but obscures our sight. The 
temptation is great. We are born or we 
clamber upon the rungs of the ladder; and 
we find among the privileged the priests of 
civilisation, of Kultur, as the Germans have 
it. Like the Brahmin or Catholic priests, we 
must have a great deal of sincerity and a great 
love of the truth before we cast doubts upon 
the principles which assure us of our ad- 
vantageous position. But a serious man who 
ponders the riddle of life cannot hesitate. To 
begin to see clearly he must free himself from 
his superstitions, however profitable they may 
be to him. This is a condition sine qua non. 
. . . To have no superstition. To force 
oneself into the attitude of a child or a 
Descartes. " 

This superstition of modern art, in which 
the interested castes believe, "this gigantic 



SCIENCE AND ART 189 

humbug," is denounced in Tolstoy's What is 
Art? With a somewhat ungentle zest he 
holds it up to ridicule, and exposes its hypoc- 
risy, its poverty, and its fundamental corrup- 
tion. He makes a clean sweep of everything. 
He brings to this work of demolition the joy 
of a child breaking his toys. The whole of 
this critical portion is often full of humour, 
but sometimes of injustice: it is warfare. 
Tolstoy used all weapons that came to his 
hand, and struck at hazard, without noticing 
whom he struck. Often enough it happened 
— as in all battles — that he wounded those 
whom it should have been his duty to defend : 
Ibsen or Beethoven. This was the result of 
his enthusiasm, which left him no time to re- 
flect before acting; of his passion, which often 
blinded him to the weakness of his reasons, 
and — let us say it — it was also the result of 
his incomplete artistic culture. 

Setting aside his literary studies, what 
could he well know of contemporary art? 
When was he able to study painting, and what 
could he have heard of European music, this 
country gentleman who had passed three- 



190 TOLSTOY 

fourths of his life in his Muscovite village, 
and who had not visited Europe since i860; 
and what did he see when he was upon his 
travels, except the schools, which were all that 
interested him? He speaks of paintings from 
hearsay, citing pell-mell among the decadents 
such painters as Puvis de Chavannes, Manet, 
Monet, Bocklin, Stuck, and Klinger; con- 
fidently admiring Jules Breton and L'Her- 
mitte on account of their excellent sentiments ; 
despising Michelangelo, and among the 
painters of the soul never once naming Rem- 
brandt. In music he felt his way better, 5 but 
knew hardly anything of it; he could not get 
beyond the impressions of his childhood, swore 
by those who were already classics about 
1840, and had not become familiar with any 
later composers (excepting Tchaikowsky, 
whose music made him weep) ; he throws 
Brahms and Richard Strauss into the bottom 
of the same bag, teaches Beethoven his busi- 
ness, 6 and, in order to judge Wagner, he 

5 1 shall return to this matter when speaking of the 
Kreutzer Sonata. 

6 His intolerance became aggravated after 1886. In 



SCIENCE AND ART 191 

thought it was sufficient to attend a single re- 
presentation of Siegfried, at which he arrived 
after the rise of the curtain, while he left in 
the middle of the second act. 7 In the matter 
of literature he is, it goes without saying, 
rather better informed. But by what curious 
aberration did he evade the criticism of the 
Russian writers whom he knew so well, while 
he laid down the law to foreign poets, whose 
temperament was as far as possible removed 
from his own, and whose leaves he merely 
turned with contemptuous negligence! 8 
His intrepid assurance increased with age. 

What shall we dof he did not as yet dare to lay hands 
on Beethoven or on Shakespeare. Moreover, he re- 
proached contemporary artists for daring to invoke their 
names. "The activity of a Galileo, a Shakespeare, a 
Beethoven has nothing in common with that of a Tyndall, 
a Victor Hugo, or a Wagner; just as the Holy Father 
would deny all relationship with the Orthodox popes." 
(What shall we dof) 

7 For that matter, he wished to leave before the end of 
the first act. "For me the question was settled. I had 
no more doubt. There was nothing to be expected of an 
author capable of imagining scenes like these. One could 
affirm beforehand that he could never write anything that 
was not evil." 

8 In order to make a selection from the French poets 



192 TOLSTOY 

It finally impelled him to write a book for 
the purpose of proving that Shakespeare "was 
not an artist." 

"He may have been — no matter what: but 
he was not an artist." 9 

His certitude is admirable. Tolstoy does 
not doubt. He does not discuss. The truth 
is his. He will tell you: 

"The Ninth Symphony is a work which 
causes social disunion." 

Again : 

"With the exception of the celebrated air 
for the violin by Bach, the Nocturne in E 
flat by Chopin, and a dozen pieces, not even 
entire, chosen from among the works of 
Hadyn, Mozart, Weber, Beethoven, and 
Chopin, ... all the rest may be rejected 
and treated with contempt, as examples of an 
art which causes social disunion." 

Again : 

of the new schools he conceived the admirable idea of 
"copying, in each volume, the verses printed on page 28 !" 
9 Shakespeare, 1903. The book was written on the oc- 
casion of an article by Ernest Crosby upon Shakespeare 
and the Working Classes. 



SCIENCE AND ART 193 

"I am going to prove that Shakespeare can- 
not be ranked even as a writer of the fourth 
order. And as a character-painter he is no- 
where." 

That the rest of humanity is of a different 
opinion is no reason for hesitating: on the 
contrary. 

"My opinion," he proudly says, "is entirely 
different from the established opinion con- 
cerning Shakespeare throughout Europe." 

Obsessed by his hatred of lies, he scents un- 
truth everywhere; and the more widely an 
idea is received, the more prickly he becomes 
in his treatment of it; he refuses it, suspecting 
in it, as he says with reference to the fame of 
Shakespeare, "one of those epidemic in- 
fluences to which men have always been sub- 
ject. Such were the Crusades in the Middle 
Ages, the belief in witchcraft, the search for 
the philosopher's stone, and the passion for 
tulips. Men see the folly of these influences 
only when they have won free from them. 
With the development of the press these 
epidemics have become particularly notable." 
And he gives as an example the most recent 



194* TOLSTOY 

of these contagious diseases, the Dreyfus 
Affair, of which he, the enemy of all injustice, 
the defender of all the oppressed, speaks with 
disdainful indifference; 10 a striking example 
of the excesses into which he is drawn by his 
suspicion of untruth and that instinctive 
hatred of "moral epidemics" of which he ad- 
mits himself the victim, and which he is un- 
able to master. It is the reverse side of a 
virtue, this inconceivable blindness of the 
seer, the reader of souls, the evoker of pas- 
sionate forces, which leads him to refer to 
King Lear as "an inept piece of work," and 
to the proud Cordelia as a "characterless 
creature." " 

10 "Here was one of those incidents which often occur, 
without attracting the attention of any one, and without 
interesting — I do not say the world — but even the French 
military world." And further on: "It was not until 
some years had passed that men awoke from their hyp- 
nosis, and understood that they could not possibly know 
whether Dreyfus were guilty or not, and that each of 
them had other interests more important and more imme- 
diate than the Affaire Dreyfus." {Shakespeare.) 

11 "King Lear is a very poor drama, very carelessly 
constructed, which can inspire nothing but weariness and 
disgust." — Othello, for which Tolstoy evinces a certain 



SCIENCE AND ART 195 

Observe that he sees very clearly certain of 
Shakespeare's actual defects — faults that we 
have not the sincerity to admit: the artificial 
quality of the poetic diction, which is uni- 
formly attributed to all his characters; and 
the rhetoric of passion, of heroism, and even 

sympathy, doubtless because the work is in harmony with 
his ideas of that time concerning marriage and jealousy, 
"while the least wretched of Shakespeare's plays, is only 
a tissue of emphatic words." Hamlet has no character 
at all: "he is the author's phonograph, who repeats all his 
ideas in a string." As for The Tempest, Cymbeline, 
Troilus and Cressida, etc., Tolstoy only mentions them on 
account of their "ineptitude." 

The only character of Shakespeare's whom he finds 
natural is Falstafr", "precisely because here the tongue of 
Shakespeare, full of frigid pleasantries and inept puns, 
is in harmony with the false, vain, debauched character of 
this repulsive drunkard." 

Tolstoy had not always been of this opinion. He read 
Shakespeare with pleasure between i860 and 1870, espe- 
cially at the time when he contemplated writing a his- 
torical play about the figure of Peter the Great. In his 
notes for 1869 we find that he even takes Hamlet as his 
model and his guide. Having mentioned his completed 
works, and comparing War and Peace to the Homeric 
ideal, he adds: 

"Hamlet and my future works; the poetry of the 
romance-writer in the depicting of character." 



196 TOLSTOY 

of simplicity. I can perfectly well under- 
stand that a Tolstoy, who was the least literary 
of writers, should have been lacking in sym- 
pathy for the art of one who was the most 
genial of men of letters. But why waste time 
in speaking of that which he cannot under- 
stand? What is the worth of judgments upon 
a world which is closed to the judge? 

Nothing, if we seek in these judgments the 
passport to these unfamiliar worlds. Inestim- 
ably great, if we seek in them the key to 
Tolstoy's art. We do not ask of a creative 
genius the impartiality of the critic. When a 
Wagner or a Tolstoy speaks of Beethoven or 
of Shakespeare, he is speaking in reality not 
of Beethoven or of Shakespeare, but of him- 
self ; he is revealing his own ideals. They do 
not even try to put us off the scent. Tolstoy, 
in criticising Shakespeare, does not attempt to 
make himself "objective." More: he re- 
proaches Shakespeare for his objective art. 
The painter of War and Peace, the master of 
impersonal art, cannot sufficiently deride 
those German critics who, following the lead 
of Goethe, "invent Shakespeare," and are re- 



SCIENCE AND ART 197 

sponsible for "the theory that art ought to be 
objective, that is to say, ought to represent hu- 
man beings without any reference to moral 
values — which is the negation of the religious 
object of art." 

It is thus from the pinnacle of a creed that 
Tolstoy pronounces his artistic judgments. 
We must not look for any personal after- 
thoughts in his criticisms. We shall find no 
trace of such a thing; he is as pitiless to his 
own works as to those of others. 12 What, 
then, does he really intend? What is the 
artistic significance of the religious ideal 
which he proposes? 

This ideal is magnificent. The term "re- 
ligious art" is apt to mislead one as to the 
breadth of the conception. Far from nar- 
rowing the province of art, Tolstoy enlarges 
it. Art, he says, is everywhere. 

"Art creeps into our whole life; what we 
term art, namely, theatres, concerts, books, ex- 

12 He classes his own "works of imagination" in the 
category of "harmful art." {What is Artf) From this 
condemnation he does not except his own plays, "devoid 
of that religious conception which must form the basis of 
the drama of the future." 



198 TOLSTOY 

hibitions, is only an infinitesimal portion of 
art. Our life is full of artistic manifestations 
of every kind, from the games of children to 
the offices of religion. Art and speech are 
the two organs of human progress. One 
affords the communion of hearts, the other the 
communion of thoughts. If either of the two 
is perverted, then society is sick. The art of 
to-day is perverted." 

Since the Renascence it has no longer been 
possible to speak of the art of the Christian 
nations. Class has separated itself from class. 
The rich, the privileged, have attempted to 
claim the monopoly of art; and they have 
made their pleasure the criterion of beauty. 
Art has become impoverished as it has grown 
remoter from the poor. 

"The category of the emotions experienced 
by those who do not work in order to live is 
far more limited than the emotions of those 
who labour. The sentiments of our modern 
society may be reduced to three: pride, sen- 
suality, and weariness of life. These three 
sentiments and their ramifications constitute 



SCIENCE AND ART 199 

almost entirely the subject of the art of the 
wealthy." 

It infects the world, perverts the people, 
propagates sexual depravity, and has become 
the worst obstacle to the realisation of human 
happiness. It is also devoid of real beauty, 
unnatural and insincere; an affected, fabri- 
cated, cerebral art. 

In the face of this lie of the aesthetics, this 
pastime of the rich, let us raise the banner 
of the living, human art: the art which unites 
the men of all classes and all nations. The 
past offers us glorious examples of such art. 

"The majority of mankind has always un- 
derstood and loved that which we consider 
the highest art: the epic of Genesis, the para- 
bles of the Gospel, the legends, tales, and 
songs of the people." 

The greatest art is that which expresses the 
religious conscience of the period. By this 
Tolstoy does not mean the teaching of the 
Church. "Every society has a religious con- 
ception of life; it is the ideal of the greatest 
happiness towards which that society tends." 



200 TOLSTOY 

All are to a certain extent aware of this 
tendency; a few pioneers express it clearly. 

"A religious conscience always exists. IT 
IS THE BED IN WHICH THE RIVER FLOWS." 

The religious consciousness of our epoch is 
the aspiration toward happiness as realised by 
the fraternity of mankind. There is no true 
art but that which strives for this union. The 
highest art is that which accomplishes it di- 
rectly by the power of love; but there is an- 
other art which participates in the same task, 
by attacking, with the weapons of scorn and 
indignation, all that opposes this fraternity. 
Such are the novels of Dickens and Do- 
stoyevsky, Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, and 
the paintings of Millet. But even though it 
fail to attain these heights, all art which rep- 
resents daily life with sympathy and truth 
brings men nearer together. Such is Don 
Quixote: such are the plays of Moliere. It 
is true that such art as the latter is continually 
sinning by its too minute realism and by the 
poverty of its subjects "when compared with 
ancient models, such as the sublime history of 
Joseph." The excessive minuteness of detail 



SCIENCE AND ART 201 

is detrimental to such works, which for that 
reason cannot become universal. 

"Modern works of art are spoiled by a 
realism which might more justly be called the 
provincialism of art." 

Thus Tolstoy unhesitatingly condemns the 
principle of his own genius. What does it 
signify to him that he should sacrifice him- 
self to the future — and that nothing of his 
work should remain? 

"The art of the future will not be a de- 
velopment of the art of the present: it will be 
founded upon other bases. It will no longer 
be the property of a caste. Art is not a trade 
or profession: it is the expression of real feel- 
ings. Now the artist can only experience real 
feelings when he refrains from isolating him- 
self; when he lives the life natural to man. 
For this reason the man who is sheltered from 
life is in the worst possible conditions for 
creative work." 

In the future "artists will all be endowed." 
Artistic activity will be made accessible to all 
"by the introduction into the elementary 
schools of instruction in music and painting, 



202 TOLSTOY 

which will be taught to the child simultane- 
ously with the first principles of grammar." 
For the rest, art will no longer call for a com- 
plicated technique, as at present; it will move 
in the direction of simplicity, clearness, and 
conciseness, which are the marks of sane and 
classic art, and of Homeric art 13 How pleas- 
ant it will be to translate universal senti- 
ments into the pure lives of this art of the 
future! To write a tale or a song, to design 
a picture for millions of beings, is a matter 
of much greater importance — and of much 
greater difficulty — than writing a novel or a 
symphony. It is an immense and almost virgin 
province. Thanks to such works men will learn 
to appreciate the happiness of brotherly union. 

13 As early as 1873 Tolstoy had written: "Think 
what you will, but in such a fashion that every word 
may be understood by every one. One cannot write any- 
thing bad in a perfectly clear and simple language. 
What is immoral will appear so false if clearly expressed 
that it will assuredly be deleted. If a writer seriously 
wishes to speak to the people, he has only to force himself 
to be comprehensible. When not a word arrests the 
reader's attention the work is good. If he cannot relate 
what he has read the work is worthless." 



SCIENCE AND ART 203 

"Art must suppress violence, and only art 
can do so. Its mission is to bring about the 
Kingdom of God, that is to say, of Love." 14 

Which of us would not endorse these gener- 
ous words? And who can fail to see that Tol- 
stoy's conception is fundamentally fruitful and 
vital, in spite of its Utopianism and a touch 
of puerility? It is true that our art as a 
whole is only the expression of a caste, which 
is itself subdivided not only by the fact of 
nationality, but in each country also into nar- 
row and hostile clans. There is not a single 
artist in Europe who realises in his own per- 
sonality the union of parties and of races. 
The most universal mind of our time was that 
of Tolstoy himself. In him men of all na- 
tions and all classes have attained fraternity; 
and those who have tasted the virile joy of 
this capacious love can no longer be satisfied 

14 This ideal of brotherhood and union among men is 
by no means, to Tolstoy's mind, the limit of human activ- 
ity; his insatiable mind conceives an unknown ideal, above 
and beyond that of love: 

"Science will perhaps one day offer as the basis of art 
a much higher ideal, and art will realise it." 



204 TOLSTOY 

by the shreds and fragments of the vast hu- 
man soul which are offered by the art of the 
European cliques. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THEORIES OF ART: MUSIC 



CHAPTER XIV 

THEORIES OF ART: MUSIC 

THE finest theory finds its value only in the 
works by which it is exemplified. With Tol- 
stoy theory and creation are always hand in 
hand, like faith and action. While he was 
elaborating his critique of art he was produc- 
ing types of the new art of which he spoke: 
of two forms of art, one higher and one less 
exalted, but both "religious" in the most hu- 
man sense. In one he sought the union of 
men through love; in the other he waged war 
upon the world, the enemy of love. It was 
during this period that he wrote those master- 
pieces: The Death of Ivan Ilyitch ( 1884— 
86), the Popular Tales and Stories (1881- 
1886), The Power of Darkness (1886), the 
Kreutzer Sonata (1889), an d Master and 
Servant (1895). 1 At the height and end of 

1 To these years was attributed, in respect of the date 
207 



208 TOLSTOY 

this artistic period, like a cathedral with two 
spires, the one symbolising eternal love and 
the other the hatred of the world, stands 
Resurrection (1899). 

All these works are distinguished from their 
predecessors by new artistic qualities. Tol- 
stoy's ideas had suffered a change, not alone 
in respect of the object of art, but also in 
respect of its form. In reading What is Art? 
or Shakespeare we are struck by the principles 
of art which Tolstoy has enounced in these 
two books ; for these principles are for the most 
part in contradiction to the greatest of his 
previous works. "Clearness, simplicity, con- 

of publication, and perhaps of completion, a work which 
was really written during the happy period of betrothal 
and the first years of marriage: the beautiful story of a 
horse, Kholstomier (1861-86). Tolstoy speaks of it in 
1883 i n a letter to Fet {Further Correspondence). The 
art of the commencement, with its fine landscapes, its 
penetrating psychological sympathy, its humour, and its 
youth, has much in common with the art of Tolstoy's ma- 
turity {Family Happiness, War and Peace). The ma- 
cabre quality of the end, and the last pages comparing 
the body of the old horse with that of his master, are 
full of a realistic brutality characteristic of the years after 
1880. 



THEORIES OF ART: MUSIC 209 

ciseness," we read in What is Art? Material 
effects are despised; minute realism is con- 
demned; and in Shakespeare the classic ideal 
of perfection and proportion is upheld. 
"Without the feeling of balance no artists 
could exist." And although in his new work 
the unregenerate man, with his genius for 
analysis and his native savagery, is not entirely 
effaced, some aspects of the latter quality being 
even emphasised, his art is profoundly modi- 
fied in some respects: the design is clearer, 
more vigorously accented; the minds of his 
characters are epitomised, foreshortened; the 
interior drama is intensified, gathered upon it- 
self like a beast of prey about to spring; the 
emotion has a quality of universality; and is 
freed of all transitory details of local realism; 
and finally the diction is rich in illustrations, 
racy, and smacking of the soil. 

His love of the people had long led him to 
appreciate the beauty of the popular idiom. 
As a child he had been soothed by the tales 
of mendicant story-tellers. As a grown man 
and a famous writer, he experienced an artistic 
delight in chatting with his peasants. 



210 TOLSTOY 

"These men," he said in later years to M. 
Paul Boyer, 2 "are masters. Of old, when I 
used to talk with them, or with the wanderers 
who, wallet on shoulder, pass through our 
countryside, I used carefully to note such of 
their expressions as I heard for the first time; 
expressions often forgotten by our modern 
literary dialect, but always good old Russian 
currency, ringing sound. . . . Yes, the 
genius of the language lives in these men." 

He must have been the more sensitive to 
such elements of the language in that his 
mind was not encumbered with literature. 3 
Through living far from any city, in the midst 
of peasants, he came to think a little in the 
manner of the people. He had the slow dia- 
lectic, the common sense which reasons slowly 
and painfully, step by step, with sudden dis- 
concerting leaps, the mania for repeating any 

2 Le Temps, August 29, 1901. 

3 "As for style," his friend Droujinin told him in 1856, 
"You are extremely illiterate ; sometimes like an innovator 
and a great poet; sometimes like an officer writing to a 
comrade. All that you write with real pleasure is ad- 
mirable. The moment you become indifferent your style 
becomes involved and is horrible." {Vie et CEuvre.) 



THEORIES OF ART: MUSIC 211 

idea when he was once convinced, of repeat- 
ing it unwearingly and indefinitely, and in 
the same words. 4 

But these were faults rather than qualities. 
It was many years before he became aware 
of the latent genius of the popular tongue; 
the raciness of its images, its poetic crudity, 
its wealth of legendary wisdom. Even at the 
time of writing War and Peace he was already 
subject to its influence. In March, 1872, he 
wrote to Strakov: 

"I have altered the method of my diction 
and my writing. The language of the people 
has sounds to express all that the poet can 
say, and it is very dear to me. It is the best 
poetic regulator. If you try to say anything 
superfluous, too emphatic, or false, the lan- 
guage will not suffer it. Whereas our literary 
tongue has no skeleton, you may pull it about 
in every direction, and the result is always 
something resembling literature." 

To the people he owed not only models of 
style; he owed them many of his inspirations. 

4 Vie et CEuvre. — During the summer of 1879 Tolstoy 
lived on terms of great intimacy with the peasants. 



21 2 TOLSTOY 

In 1877 a teller of bylines came to Yasnaya 
Polyana, and Tolstoy took notes of several of 
his stories. Of the number was the legend 
By What do Men Live? and The Three Old 
Men, which became, as we know, two of the 
finest of the Popular Tales and Legends which 
Tolstoy published a few years later. 5 

This is a work unique in modern art. It is 
higher than art: for who, in reading it, thinks 
of literature? The spirit of the Gospel and 
the pure love of the brotherhood of man are 
combined with the smiling geniality of the 
wisdom of the people. It is full of simplicity, 
limpidity, and ineffable goodness of heart; 
and that supernatural radiance which from 
time to time — so naturally and inevitably — 
bathes the whole picture; surrounding the old 
Elias 6 like a halo, or hovering in the cabin 
of the cobbler Michael; he who, through his 
skylight on the ground-level, sees the feet of 
people passing, and whom the Lord visits in 
the guise of the poor whom the good cobbler 

5 In the notes of his readings, between i860 and 1870, 
Tolstoy wrote: "The bylines — very greatly impressed." 
•The Two Old Men (1885). 



THEORIES OF ART: MUSIC 213 

has succoured. 7 Sometimes in these tales the 
parables of the Gospel are mingled with a 
vague perfume of Oriental legends, of those 
Thousand and One Nights which Tolstoy had 
loved since childhood. 8 Sometimes, again, 
the fantastic light takes on a sinister aspect, 
lending the tale a terrifying majesty. Such 
is Pakhom the Peasant? the tale of the man 
who kills himself in acquiring a great surface 
of land — all the land which he can encircle 
by walking for a whole day, and who dies 
on completing his journey. 

"On the hill the starschina, sitting on the 
ground, watched him as he ran; and he 
cackled, holding his stomach with both hands. 
And Pakhom fell. 

" l Ah I Well done, my merry fellow ! You 
have won a mighty lot of land P 

"The starschina rose, and threw a mattock 
to Pakhom's servant. 

" 'There he is: bury him.' 

7 Where Love is, There God is Also (1885). 

8 By What do Men Live? (1881); The Three Old 
Men (1884) ; The Godchild (1886). 

9 This tale bears the sub-title, Does a Man Need Much 
Soil? (1886). 



214 TOLSTOY 

"The servant was alone. He dug a ditch 
for Pakhom, just as long as from his feet to 
his head: two yards, and he buried him." 

Nearly all these tales conceal, beneath their 
poetic envelope, the same evangelical moral 
of renunciation and pardon. 

"Do not avenge thyself upon whosoever 
shall offend thee. 10 

"Do not resist whosover shall do thee 
evil. 11 

"Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord." 12 

And everywhere, and as the conclusion of 
all, is love. 

Tolstoy^ who wished to found an art for all 
men, achieved universality at the first stroke. 
Throughout the world his work has met with 
a success which can never fail, for it is purged 
of all the perishable elements of art, and noth- 
ing is left but the eternal. 

The Power of Darkness does not rise to this 
august simplicity of heart; it does not pre- 

10 The Fire that flames does not go out (1885). 

11 The Wax Taper (1885); The Story of Ivan the 
Idiot. 

12 The Godson (1886). 



THEORIES OF ART: MUSIC 215 

tend to do so. It is the reverse side of the 
picture. On the one hand is the dream of 
divine love; on the other, the ghastly reality. 
We may judge, in reading this play, whether 
Tolstoy's faith and his love of the people ever 
caused him to idealise the people or betray 
the truth. 

Tolstoy, so awkward in most of his dra- 
matic essays, 13 has here attained to mastery. 
The characters and the action, are handled 
with ease; the coxcomb Nikita, the sensual, 

13 The love of the theatre came to him somewhat late 
in life. It was a discovery of his, and he made this dis- 
covery during the winter of 1869-70. According to his 
custom, he was at once afire with enthusiasm. 

" All this winter I have busied myself exclusively with 
the drama; and, as always happens to men who have 
never, up to the age of forty, thought about such or such 
a subject, when they suddenly turn their attention to this 
neglected subject, it seems to them that they perceive a 
number of new and wonderful things. ... I have 
read Shakespeare, Goethe, Pushkin, Gogol, and Moliere. 
. . . I want to read Sophocles and Euripides. . . 
I have kept my bed a long time, being unwell — and when 
I am unwell a host of comic or dramatic characters be- 
gin to struggle for life within me . . . and they do 
it with much success." — Letters to Fet, February 17-21, 
1870 {Further Letters). 



216 TOLSTOY 

headstrong passion of Anissia, the cynical 
good-humour of the old woman, Matrena, 
who gloats maternally over the adultery of 
her son, and the sancity of the old stammering 
Hakim — God inhabiting a ridiculous body. 
Then comes the fall of Nikita, weak and with- 
out real evil, but fettered by his sin; falling to 
the depths of crime in spite of his efforts to 
check himself on the dreadful declivity; but 
his mother and his wife drag him down- 
ward. . . . 

"The peasants aren't worth much. . . . 
But the babas! The women! They are wild 
animals . . . they are afraid of nothing! 
. . . Sisters, there are millions of you, all 
Russians, and you are all as blind as moles. 
You know nothing, you know nothing! 
. . . The moujik at least may manage to 
learn something — in the drink-shop, or who 
knows where? — in prison, or in the barracks; 
but the baba — what can she know? She has 
seen nothing, heard nothing. As she has 
grown up, so she will die. . . . They are 
like little blind puppies who go running here 
and there and ramming their heads against 



THEORIES OF ART: MUSIC 217 

all sorts of filth. . . . They only know 
their silly songs: 'Ho — o — o! Ho — o — o!' 
What does it mean? Ho — o — o? They 
don't know!" 14 

Then comes the terrible scene of the 
murder of the new-born child. Nikita does 
not want to kill it. Anissia, who has murdered 
her husband for him, and whose nerves have 
ever since been tortured by her crime, be- 
comes ferocious, maddened, and threatens to 
give him up. She cries: 

"At least I shan't be alone any longer! 
He'll be a murderer too! Let him know 
what it's like!" 

Nikita crushes the child between two 
boards. In the midst of his crime he flies, 
terrified; he threatens to kill Anissia and his 
mother; he sobs, he prays: — 

"Little mother, I can't go on!" He thinks 
he hears the mangled baby crying. 

"Where shall I go to be safe?" 

It is Shakespearean. Less violent, but still 
more poignant, is the dialogue of the little 
girl and the old servant-woman, who, alone 

14 A variant of Act iv. 



218 TOLSTOY 

in the house, at night, hear and guess at 
the crime which is being enacted off the 
stage. 

The end is voluntary expiation. Nikita, 
accompanied by his father, the old Hakim, 
enters barefooted, in the midst of a wedding. 
He kneels, asks pardon of all, and accuses 
himself of every crime. Old Hakim en- 
courages him, looks upon him with a smile 
of ecstatic suffering. 

"God! Oh, look at him, God!" 

The drama gains quite a special artistic 
flavour by the use of the peasant dialect. 

"I ransacked my notebooks in order to 
write The Power of Darkness" Tolstoy told 
M. Paul Boyer. 

The unexpected images, flowing from the 
lyrical yet humorous soul of the Russian peo- 
ple, have a swing and a vigour about them 
beside which images of the more literary 
quality seem tame and colourless. Tolstoy 
revelled in them ; we feel, in reading the play, 
that the artist while writing it amused him- 
self by noting these expressions, these turns of 
thought; the comic side of them by no means 



THEORIES OF ART: MUSIC 219 

escapes him, 15 even while the apostle is 
mourning amidst the dark places of the hu- 
man soul. 

While he was studying the people, and 
sending into their darkness a ray of light from 
his station above them, he was also devoting 
two tragic romances to the still darker night 
of the middle classes and the wealthy. At 
this period the dramatic form was predomi- 
nant over his ideas of art. The Death of 
Ivan Ilyitch and The Kreutzer Sonata are 
both true dramas of the inner soul, of the soul 
turned upon itself and concentrated upon it- 
self, and in The Kreutzer Sonata it is the hero 
of the drama himself who unfolds it by nar- 
ration. 

The Death of Ivan Ilyitch (1884-86) has 
impressed the French public as few Russian 
works have done. At the beginning of this 
study I mentioned that I had witnessed the 
sensation caused by this book among the mid- 

15 The creation of this heart-breaking drama must have 
been a strain. He writes to Teneromo: "I am well and 
happy. I have been working all this time at my play. 
It is finished. (January, 1887. Further Letters.) 



220 TOLSTOY 

die-class readers in the French provinces, a 
class apparently indifferent to literature and 
art. I think the explanation lies in the fact 
that the book represents, with a painful real- 
ism, a type of the average, mediocre man; a 
conscientious functionary, without religion, 
without ideals, almost without thought; the 
man who is absorbed in his duties, in his me- 
chanical life, until the hour of his death, when 
he sees with terror that he has not lived. 
Ivan Ilyitch is the representative type of the 
European bourgeoisie of 1880 which reads 
Zola, goes to hear Bernhardt, and, without 
holding any faith, is not even irreligious ; for 
it does not take the trouble either to believe 
or to disbelieve; it simply never thinks of 
such matters. 

In the violence of its attacks, alternately 
bitter and almost comic, upon the world in 
general, and marriage in particular, The 
Death of Ivan Ilyitch was the first of a new 
series of works ; it was the forerunner of the 
still more morose and unwordly Kreutzer 
Sonata and Resurrection. There is a lament- 
able yet laughable emptiness in this life (as 



THEORIES OF ART: MUSIC 221 

there is in thousands and thousands of lives), 
with its grotesque ambitions, its wretched 
gratification of vanity, "always better than 
spending the evening opposite one's wife"; 
with its weariness and hatred of the official 
career; its privileges, and the embitterment 
which they cause; and its one real pleasure: 
whist. This ridiculous life is lost for a cause 
yet more ridiculous — a fall from a ladder, one 
day when Ivan wished to hang a curtain over 
the drawing-room window. The lie of life. 
The lie of sickness. The lie of the well-to-do 
doctor, who thinks only of himself. The lie 
of the family, whom illness disgusts. The 
lie of the wife, who professes devotion, and 
calculates how she will live when her husband 
is dead. The universal lie, against which is 
set only the truth of a compassionate servant, 
who does not try to conceal his condition from 
the dying man, and helps him out of brotherly 
kindness. Ivan Ilyitch, "full of an infinite 
pity for himself," weeps over his loneliness 
and the egoism of men; he suffers horribly, 
until the day on which he perceives that his 
past life has been a lie, and that he can repair 



222 TOLSTOY 

that lie. Immediately all becomes clear — an 
hour before his death. He no longer thinks 
of himself; he thinks of his family; he pities 
them; he must die and rid them of himself. 

"Where are you, Pain? Here. . . . 
Well, you have only to persist. — And Death, 
where is Death? He did not find it. In 
place of Death he saw only a ray of light. 'It 
is over/ said some one.— He heard these 
words and repeated them to himself. 'Death 
no longer exists,' he told himself." 

In the Kreutzer Sonata there is not even 
this "ray of light." It is a ferocious piece of 
work; Tolstoy lashes out at society like a 
wounded beast avenging itself for what it has 
suffered. We must not forget that the story 
is the confession of a human brute, who has 
taken life, and who is poisoned by the virus 
of jealousy. Tolstoy hides himself behind his 
leading character. We certainly find his own 
ideas, though heightened in tone, in these 
furious invectives against hypocrisy in 
general; the hypocrisy of the education of 
women, of love, of marriage — marriage, that 
"domestic prostitution"; the hypocrisy of the 



THEORIES OF ART: MUSIC 223 

world, of science, of physicians — those "sowers 
of crime." But the hero of the book impels 
the writer into an extraordinary brutality of 
expression, a violent rush of carnal images — 
all the excesses of a luxurious body — and, by 
reaction into all the fury of asceticism, the 
fear and hatred of the passions; maledictions 
hurled in the face of life by a monk of the 
Middle Ages, consumed with sensuality. 
Having written the book Tolstoy himself was 
alarmed: 

"I never foresaw at all," he said in the 
Epilogue to the Kreutzer Sonata/' 16 that in 
writing this book a rigorous logic would 
bring me where I have arrived. My own 
conclusions terrified me at first, and I was 
tempted to reject them; but it was impossible 
for me to refuse to hear the voice of my rea- 
son and my conscience." 

He found himself repeating, in calmer 
tones, the savage outcry of the murderer 
Posdnicheff against love and marriage. 

16 A French translation of this Epilogue (Postface), 
by M. Halperine-Kaminsky was published in the volume 
Plaisb's vicieux, under the title Des relations entre les 
sexes. 



224. TOLSTOY 

"He who regards woman — above all his 
wife — with sensuality, already commits adul- 
tery with her." 

"When the passions have disappeared, then 
humanity will no longer have a reason for 
being; it will have executed the Law; the 
union of mankind will be accomplished." 

He will prove, on the authority of the 
Gospel according to Matthew, that "the 
Christian ideal is not marriage; that Chris- 
tain marriage cannot exist; that marriage, 
from the Christian point of view, is an ele- 
ment not of progress but of downfall; that 
love, with all that precedes and follows it, 
is an obstacle to the true human ideal." 17 

17 Let us take notice that Tolstoy was never guilty of 
the simplicity of believing that the ideal of celibacy and 
absolute chastity was capable of realisation by humanity 
as we know it. But according to him an ideal is incap- 
able of realisation by its very definition : it is an appeal to 
the heroic energies of the soul. 

"The conception of the Christian ideal, which is the 
union of all living creatures in brotherly love, is irrecon- 
cilable with the conduct of life, which demands a con- 
tinual effort towards an ideal which is inaccessible, but 
does not expect that it will ever be attained." 



THEORIES OF ART: MUSIC 225 

But he had never formulated these ideas 
clearly, even to himself, until they fell from 
the lips of PosdnichefL As often happens 
with great creative artists, the work carried 
the writer with it; the artist outstripped the 
thinker; a process by which art lost nothing. 
In the power of its effects, in passionate con- 
centration, in the brutal vividness of its im- 
pressions, and in fulness and maturity of 
form, nothing Tolstoy has written equals the 
Kreutzer Sonata. 

I have not explained the title. To be ex- 
act, it is erroneous ; it gives a false idea of the 
book, in which music plays only an accessory 
part. Suppress the sonata, and all would be 
the same. Tolstoy made the mistake of con- 
fusing the two matters, both of which he took 
deeply to heart: the depraving power of 
music, and the depraving power of love. 
The demon of music should have been dealt 
with in a separate volume; the space which 
Tolstoy has accorded it in the work in ques- 
tion is insufficient to prove the danger which 
he wishes to denounce. I must emphasize 



226 TOLSTOY 

this matter somewhat; for I do not think the 
attitude of Tolstoy in respect of music has 
ever been fully understood. 

He was far from disliking music. Only 
the things one loves are feared as Tolstoy 
feared the power of music. Remember what 
a place the memories of music hold in Child- 
hood, and above all in Family Happiness, in 
which the whole cycle of love, from its spring- 
tide to its autumn, is unrolled to the phrases 
of the Sonata quasi una fantasia of Beethoven. 
Remember, too, the wonderful symphonies 
w T hich Nekhludov 18 hears in fancy, and the 
little Petia, the night before his death. 19 Al- 
though Tolstoy had studied music very in- 
differently, it used to move him to tears, and 
at certain periods of his life he passionately 
abandoned himself to its influence. In 1858 
he founded a Musical Society, which in later 
years became the Moscow Conservatoire. 

"He was extremely fond of music," writes 

18 At the end of A Russian Proprietor. 

19 War and Peace. — I do not mention Albert (1857), 
the story of a musician of genius ; the book is weak in the 
extreme. 



THEORIES OF ART: MUSIC 227 

his brother-in-law, S. A. Bers. "He used to 
play the piano, and was fond of the classic 
masters. He would often sit down to the 
piano before beginning his work. 20 Prob- 
ably he found inspiration in so doing. He 
always used to accompany my youngest sister, 
whose voice he loved. I have noticed that 
the sensations which the music evoked in him 
were accompanied by a slight pallor and an 
imperceptible grimace, which seemed expres- 
sive of fear." 21 

It was really fear that he felt; fear inspired 
by the stress of those unknown forces which 
shook him to the roots of his being. In the 
world of music he felt his moral will, his rea- 
son, and all the reality of life dissolve. Let 
us turn to the scene, in the first volume of 
War and Peace, in which Nikolas Rostoff, 
who has just lost heavily at cards, returns in a 
state of despair. He hears his sister Natasha 
singing. He forgets everything. 

"He waited with a feverish impatience 
for the note which was about to follow, and 

20 The period spoken of is 1876-77. 

21 S. A. Bers, Memories of Tolstoy. 



228 TOLSTOY 

for a moment the only thing in all the world 
was the melody in three-quarter-time: Oh! 
mio crudele affettof 

" 'What an absurd existence ours is!' he 
thought. 'Unhappiness, money, hatred, hon- 
our — they are all nothing. . . . Here is 
the truth, the reality! . . . Natasha, my 
little dove! . . . Let us see if she is go- 
ing to reach that B? . . . She has 
reached it, thank God!' 

"And to emphasize the B he sung the third 
octave below it in accompaniment. 

" 'How splendid! I have sung it too,' he 
cried, and the vibration of that octave awoke 
in his soul all that was best and purest. Be- 
side this superhuman sensation, what were 
his losses at play and his word of honour? 
. . . Follies! One could kill, steal, and 
yet be happy!" 

Nikolas neither kills nor steals, and for him 
music is only a passing influence; but Natasha 
is on the point of losing her self-control. 
After an evening at the Opera, "in that 
strange world which is intoxicated and per- 
verted by art, and a thousand leagues from 



THEORIES OF ART: MUSIC 229 

the real world, a world in which good and 
evil, the extravagant and the reasonable, are 
mingled and confounded," she listened to a 
declaration from Anatol Kouraguin, who was 
madly in love with her, and she consented to 
elope with him. 

The older Tolstoy grew, the more he feared 
music. 22 A man whose influence over him 
was considerable — Auerbach, whom in i860 
he had met in Dresden — had doubtless a hand 
in fortifying his prejudices. "He spoke of 
music as of a Pflichtloser Genuss (a profligate 
amusement). According to him, it was an 
incentive to depravity." 23 

Among so many musicians, some of whose 
music is at least amoral, why, asks M. Camille 
Bellaigue, 24 should Tolstoy have chosen Bee- 
thoven, the purest, the chastest of all? — Be- 

22 But he never ceased to love it. One of the friends 
of his later years was a musician, Goldenreiser, who spent 
the summer of 19 10 near Yasnaya. Almost every day 
he came to play to Tolstoy during the latter's last illness. 
(Journal des Debats, November 18, 1 910.) 

23 Letter of April 21, 1861. 

24 Tolstoi et la musique (Le Gaulois, January 4, 
1911). 



230 TOLSTOY 

cause he was the most powerful. Tolstoy had 
early loved his music, and he always loved it. 
His remotest memories of Childhood were 
connected with the Sonata Pathetique; and 
when Nekhludov in Resurrection heard the 
Andante of the Symphony in C Minor, he 
could hardly restrain his tears : "he was filled 
with tenderness for himself and for those he 
loved." Yet we have seen with what animos- 
ity Tolstoy referred in his What is Art 25 to the 
"unhealthy works of the deaf Beethoven" ; and 
even in 1876 the fury with which "he de- 
lighted in demolishing Beethoven and in cast- 
ing doubts upon his genius" had revolted 
Tchaikowsky and had diminished his admira- 
tion for Tolstoy. The Kreutzer Sonata en- 
ables us to plumb the depths of this passion- 
ate injustice. What does Tolstoy complain 
of in Beethoven? Of his power. He re- 
minds us of Goethe; listening to "the Sym- 

25 Not only to the later works of Beethoven. Even in 
the case of those earlier works which he consented to re- 
gard as "artistic," Tolstoy complained of "their artificial 
form." — In a letter to Tchaikowsky he contrasts with 
Mozart and Haydn "the artificial manner of Beethoven, 
Schubert, and Berlioz, which produces calculated effects." 



THEORIES OF ART: MUSIC 231 

phony in C Minor, he is overwhelmed by it, 
and angrily turns upon the imperious master 
who subjects him against his will. 26 

"This music," says Tolstoy, "transports me 
immediately into the state of mind which was 
the composer's when he wrote it. . . . 
Music ought to be a State matter, as in China. 
We ought not to let Tom, Dick, and Harry 
wield so frightful a hypnotic power. . . . 
As for these things (the first Presto of the 
Sonata) one ought only to be allowed to play 
them under particular and important circum- 
stances. . . ." 

Yet we see, after this revolt, how he sur- 
renders to the power of Beethoven, and how 
this power is by his own admission a pure and 
ennobling force. On hearing the piece in 
question, Posdnichef? falls into an indefinable 
state of mind, which he cannot analyse, but 
of which the consciousness fills him with de- 
light. "There is no longer room for jeal- 

26 Instance the scene described by M. Paul Boyer : 
"Tolstoy sat down to play Chopin. At the end of the 
fourth Ballade, his eyes filled with tears. 'Ah, the ani- 
mal!' he cried. And suddenly he rose and went out." 
(Le Temps, November 2, 1902.) 



232 TOLSTOY 

ousy." The wife is not less transfigured. 
She has, while she plays, "a majestic severity 
of expression"; and "a faint smile, compas- 
sionate and happy, after she has finished." 
What is there perverse in all this? This: 
that the spirit is enslaved; that the unknown 
power of sound can do with him what it wills ; 
destroy him, if it please. 

This is true, but Tolstoy forgets one thing: 
the mediocrity and the lack of vitality in the 
majority of those who make or listen to music. 
Music cannot be dangerous to those who feel 
nothing. The spectacle of the Opera-house 
during a performance of Salome is quite 
enough to assure us of the immunity of the 
public to the more perverse emotions evoked 
by the art of sounds. To be in danger one 
must be, like Tolstoy, abounding in life. The 
truth is that in spite of his injustice where 
Beethoven was concerned, Tolstoy felt his 
music more deeply than do the majority of 
those who now exalt him. He, at least, knew 
the frenzied passions, the savage violence, 
which mutter through the art of the "deaf old 



THEORIES OF ART: MUSIC 233 

man," but of which the orchestras and the 
virtuosi of to-day are innocent. Beethoven 
would perhaps have preferred the hatred of 
Tolstoy to the enthusiasm of his admirers. 



CHAPTER XV 



"RESURRECTION" 



CHAPTER XV 

"resurrection" 

Ten years separated Resurrection from the 
Kreutzer Sonata; 1 ten years which were more 
and more absorbed in moral propaganda. 
Ten years also separated the former book from 
the end for which this life hungered, famished 
as it was for the eternal. Resurrection is in 
a sense the artistic testament of the author. 
It dominates the end of his life as War and 
Peace crowned its maturity. It is the last 

1 Master and Servant ( 1895) is more or less of a tran- 
sition between the gloomy novels which preceded it and 
Resurrection; which is full of the light of the Divine 
charity. But it is akin to The Death of Ivan Ilyitch 
and the Popular Tales rather than to Resurrection, which 
only presents, towards the end of the book, the sublime 
transformation of a selfish and morally cowardly man un- 
der the stress of an impulse of sacrifice. The greater 
part of the book consists of the extremely realistic picture 
of a master without kindness and a servant full of resig- 
nation, who are surprised, by night, on the steppes, by a 
blizzard, in which they lose their way. The master, who 

237 



238 TOLSTOY 

peak, perhaps the highest — if not the most 
stupendous — whose invisible summit is lost 
in the mists. Tolstoy is seventy years old. 
He contemplates the world, his life, his past 
mistakes, his faith, his righteous anger. 

He sees them from a height. We find the 
same ideals as in his previous books; the same 
warring upon hypocrisy; but the spirit of the 
artist, as in War and Peace, soars above his 
subject. To the sombre irony, the mental tu- 
mult of the Kreutzer Sonata and The Death 
of Ivan Ilyitch he adds a religious serenity, a 

at first tries to escape, deserting his companion, returns, 
and finding the latter half-frozen, throws himself upon 
him, covering him with his body, gives him of his warmth, 
and sacrifices himself by instinct; he does not know why, 
but the tears fill his eyes; it seems to him that he has 
become the man he is seeking to save — Nikita — and that 
his life is no longer in himself, but in Nikita. "Nikita 
is alive; then I am still alive, myself." He has almost 
forgotten who he, Vassili, was. He thinks: "Vassili 
did not know what had to be done. But I, I know!" 
He hears the voice of Him whom he was awaiting (here 
his dream recalls one of the Popular Tales), of Him who, 
a little while ago, had commanded him to lie upon Nikita. 
He cries, quite happy: "Lord, I am coming!" and he 
feels that he is free ; that nothing is keeping him back any 
longer. He is dead. 



"RESURRECTION" 2S9 

detachment from the world, which is faith- 
fully reflected in himself. One is reminded, 
at times, of a Christian Goethe. 

All the literary characteristics which we 
have noted in the works of his later period are 
to be found here, and of these especially the 
concentration of the narrative, which is even 
more striking in a long novel than in a short 
story. There is a wonderful unity about the 
book; in which respect it differs widely from 
War and Peace and Anna Karenin. There 
are hardly any digressions of an episodic na- 
ture. A single train of action, tenaciously fol- 
lowed, is worked out in every detail. There is 
the same vigorous portraiture, the same ease 
and fulness of handling, as in the Kreutzer 
Sonata. The observation is more than ever 
lucid, robust, pitilessly realistic, revealing the 
animal in the man — "the terrible persistence 
of the beast in man, more terrible when this 
animality is not openly obvious; when it is 
concealed under a so-called poetical exterior." 
Witness the drawing-room conversations, 
which have for their object the mere satisfac- 
tion of a physical need: "the need of stimulat- 



240 TOLSTOY 

ing the digestion by moving the muscles of 
the tongue and gullet" ; the crude vision of 
humanity which spares no one; neither the 
pretty Korchagina, "with her two false teeth, 
the salient bones of her elbows, and the large- 
ness of her finger-nails," and her decolletage, 
which inspires in Nekhludov a feeling of 
"shame and disgust, disgust and shame" ; nor 
the heroine, Maslova, nothing of whose de- 
gradation is hidden; her look of premature 
age, her vicious, ignoble expression, her pro- 
vocative smile, the odour of brandy that hangs 
about her, her red and swollen face. There is 
a brutality of naturalistic detail: as instance, 
the woman who converses while crouched 
over the commode. Youth and the poetic im- 
agination have vanished; except in the pass- 
ages which deal with the memories of first 
love, whose music vibrates in the reader's 
mind with hypnotic intensity; the night of the 
Holy Saturday, and the night of Passover; the 
thaw, the white mist, so thick "that at five 
paces from the house one saw nothing but a 
shadowy mass, whence glimmered the red 
light of a lamp" ; the crowing of the cocks in 



"RESURRECTION" Ml 

the night; the sounds from the frozen river, 
where the ice cracks, snores, bubbles, and tin- 
kles like a breaking glass ; and the young man 
who, from the night outside, looks through 
the window at the young girl who does not see 
him: seated near the table in the flickering 
light of the little lamp — Katusha, pensive, 
dreaming, and smiling at her dreams. 

The lyrical powers of the writer are given 
but little play. His art has become more im- 
personal; more alien to his own life. The 
world of criminals and revolutionaries, which 
he here describes, was unfamiliar to him; 2 he 
enters it only by an effort of voluntary sym- 
pathy; he even admits that before studying 
them at close quarters the revolutionaries in- 
spired him with an unconquerable aversion. 
All the more admirable is his impeccable ob- 
servation — a faultless mirror. What a wealth 
of types, of precise details! How everything 
is seen; baseness and virtue, without hardness, 

2 While on the other hand he had mixed in all the va- 
rious circles depicted in War and Peace, Anna Karenin, 
The Cossacks, and Sebastopol; the salons of the nobles, 
the army, the life of the country estate. He had only to 
remember. 



242 TOLSTOY 

without weakness, but with a serene under- 
standing and a brotherly pity. . . . The 
terrible picture of the women in the prison! 
They are pitiless to one another; but the artist 
is the merciful God; he sees, in the heart of 
each, the distress that hides beneath humilia- 
tion, and the tearful eyes beneath the mask of 
effrontery. The pure, faint light which lit- 
tle by little waxes within the vicious mind of 
Maslova, and at last illumines her with a 
sacrificial flame, has the touching beauty of 
one of those rays of sunshine which trans- 
figures some humble scene painted by the 
brush of Rembrandt. There is no severity 
here, even for the warders and executioners. 
"Lord, forgive them, for they know not what 
they do!" . . . The worst of it is that 
often they do know what they do; they feel 
all the pangs of remorse, yet they cannot do 
otherwise. There broods over the book the 
sense of the crushing and inevitable fatality 
which weighs upon those who suffer and those 
who cause that suffering: the director of the 
prison, full of natural kindness, as sick of his 
jailer's life as of the pianoforte exercises of the 



"RESURRECTION" 24$ 

pale, sickly daughter with the dark circles be- 
neath her eyes, who indefatigably murders a 
rhapsody of Liszt; the Governor-General of 
the Siberian town, intelligent and kindly, who, 
in the hope of escaping the inevitable conflict 
between the good he wishes to do and the evil 
he is forced to do, has been steadily drink- 
ing since the age of thirty- five ; who is always 
sufficiently master of himself to keep up ap- 
pearances, even when he is drunk. And 
among these people we find the ordinary af- 
fection for wife and children, although their 
calling renders them pitiless in respect of 
the rest of humanity. 

The only character in this book who has no 
objective reality is Nekhludov himself; and 
this is so because Tolstoy has invested him 
with his own ideas. This is a defect of sev- 
eral of the most notable types in War and 
Peace and in Anna Karenin; for example, 
Prince Andrei, Pierre Besoukhov, Levine, 
and others. The fault was less grave, how- 
ever, in these earlier books; for the charac- 
ters, by force of their circumstances and their 
age, were nearer to the author's actual state 



244 TOLSTOY 

of mind. But in Resurrection the author 
places in the body of an epicurean of thirty- 
five the disembodied soul of an old man of 
seventy. I will not say that the moral crisis 
through which Nekhludov is supposed to pass 
is absolutely untrue and impossible; nor even 
that it could not be brought about so sud- 
denly. 3 But there is nothing in the tempera- 
ment, the character, the previous life of the 
man as Tolstoy depicts him, to announce or 
explain this crisis; and once it has commenced 
nothing interrupts it. Tolstoy has, it is true, 
with profound observation, represented the 
impure alloy which at the outset is mingled 
with the thoughts of sacrifice; the tears of 
self-pity and admiration ; and, later, the horror 
and repugnance which seize upon Nekhludov 
when he is brought face to face with reality. 

3 "Men carry in them the germ of all the human qual- 
ities, and they manifest now one, now another, so that 
they often appear to be not themselves; that is, them- 
selves as they habitually appear. Among some these 
changes are more rare; among others more rapid. To 
the second class of men belongs Nekhludov. Under the 
influence of various physical or moral causes sudden and 
complete changes are incessantly being produced within 
him." {Resurrection.) 



"RESURRECTION" 245 

But his resolution never flinches. This crisis 
has nothing in common with his previous 
crisis, violent but only momentary. 4 Hence- 
forth nothing can arrest this weak and unde- 
cided character. A wealthy prince, much 
respected, greatly enjoying the good things of 
the world, on the point of marrying a charm- 
ing girl who loves him and is not distasteful 
to him, he suddenly decides to abandon 
everything — wealth, the world, and social po- 
sition — and to marry a prostitute in order to 
atone for a remote offence; and his exalta- 
tion survives, without flinching, for months; 
it holds out against every trial, even the news 
that the woman he wishes to make his wife 
is continuing her life of debauchery. 5 Here 

4 "Many times in his life he had proceeded to clean up 
his conscience. This was the term he used to denote 
those moral crises in which he decided to sweep out the 
moral refuse which littered his soul. At the conclusion 
of these crises he never failed to set himself certain rules, 
which he swore always to keep. He kept a diary; he be- 
gan a new life. But each time it was not long before he 
fell once more to the same level, or lower still, than be- 
fore the crisis." (Resurrection.) 

5 Upon learning that Maslova is engaged in an intrigue 
with a hospital attendant, Nekhludov is more than ever 



246 TOLSTOY 

we have a saintliness of which the psychology 
of a Dostoyevsky would have shown us the 
source, in the obscure depths of the con- 
science or even in the organism of his hero. 
Nekhludov, however, is by no means one of 
Dostoyevsky's heroes. He is the type of the 
average man, commonplace, sane, who is Tol- 
stoy's usual hero. To be exact, we are con- 
scious of the juxtaposition of a very material- 
istic 6 character and a moral crisis which be- 
longs to another man, and that man the aged 
Tolstoy. 

The same impression — one of elemental 
duality — is again produced at the end of the 
book, where a third part, full of strictly rea- 
listic observation, is set beside an evangelical 
conclusion which is not in any way essential ; 
it is an act of personal faith, 7 which does not 

decided to "sacrifice his liberty in order to redeem the sin 
of this woman." 

6 Tolstoy has never drawn a character with so sure, 
so broad a touch as in the beginning of Resurrection. 
Witness the admirable description of Nekhludov's toilet 
and his actions of the morning before the first session in 
the Palace of Justice. 

7 The word "act" to be found here and there in the 



"RESURRECTION" 247 

logically issue from the life under observa- 
tion. 

This is not the first time that Tolstoy's 
religion has become involved with his real- 
ism; but in previous works the two elements 
have been better mingled. Here they are not 
amalgamated; they simply coexist; and the 
contrast is the more striking in that Tolstoy's 
faith is always becoming less and less indif- 
ferent to proof, while his realism is daily be- 
coming more finely whetted, more free from 
convention. Here is a sign, not of fatigue, but 
of age; a certain stiffness, so to speak, in the 
joints. The religious conclusion is not the or- 
ganic development of the work. It is a Deus 
ex machind. I personally am convinced that 
right in the depth of Tolstoy's being — in spite 
of all his affirmations — the fusion between his 
two diverse natures was by no means corn- 
text in such phrases as "act of faith," "act of will," is 
used in a sense peculiar to Catholic and Orthodox Chris- 
tians. A penitent is told to perform an "act of faith" as 
penance; which is usually the repetition of certain pray- 
ers of the nature of a creed. The "act," in short, is a 
repetition, a declamation, a meditation: anything but an 
action. — [Trans. ] 



248 TOLSTOY 

plete: between the truth of the artist and the 
truth of the believer. 

Although Resurrection has not the har- 
monious fulness of the work of his youth, and 
although I, for my part, prefer War and 
Peace, it is none the less one of the most beau- 
tiful poems of human compassion; perhaps 
the most truthful ever written. More than 
in any other book I see through the pages of 
this those bright eyes of Tolstoy's, the pale- 
grey, piercing eyes, "the look that goes 
straight to the heart," 8 and in each heart sees 
its God. 

8 Letter of Countess Tolstoy's, 1884. 



CHAPTER XVI 

RELIGION AND POLITICS 



CHAPTER XVI 

RELIGION AND POLITICS 

TOLSTOY never renounced his art. A great 
artist cannot, even if he would, abandon the 
reason of his existence. He can, for religious 
reasons, cease to publish, but. he cannot cease 
to write. Tolstoy never interrupted his work 
of artistic creation. M. Paul Boyer, who saw 
him, during the last few years, at Yasnaya 
Polyana, says that he would now give prom- 
inence to his evangelistic works, now to his 
works of imagination; he would work at the 
one as a relaxation from the other. When he 
had finished some social pamphlet, some Ap- 
peal to the Rulers or to the Ruled, he would 
allow himself to resume one of the charming 
tales which he was, so to speak, in process of 
recounting to himself; such as his Hadji- 
Mourad, a military epic, which celebrated an 
episode of the wars of the Caucasus and the 

251 



252 TOLSTOY 

resistance of the mountaineers under Schamyl. 1 
Art was still his relaxation, his pleasure; but 
he would have thought it a piece of vanity to 
make a parade of it. With the exception of 
his Cycle of Readings for Every Day of the 
Year ( 1 904-5 ), 2 in which he collected the 
thoughts of various writers upon Life and the 
Truth — a true anthology of the poetical wis- 
dom of the world, from the Holy Books of 
the East to the works of contemporary writers 
— nearly all his literary works of art, properly 
so called, which have been written later than 
1900 have remained in manuscript. 3 

1 Le Temps, November 2, 1902. 

2 Tolstoy regarded this as one of his most important 
works. "One of my books — For Every Day — to which I 
have the conceit to attach a great importance. . . ." 
(Letter to Jan Styka, July 27-August 9, 1909.) 

3 These works should shortly appear, under the super- 
vision of Countess Alexandra, Tolstoy's daughter. The 
list of them has been published in various journals. We 
may mention Hadji-Mourad, Father Sergius, the psychol- 
ogy of a monk; She Had Every Virtue, the study of a 
woman ; the Diary of a Madman, the Diary of a Mother, 
the Story of a Doukhobor, the Story of a Hive, the Post- 
humous Journal of Theodore Kouzmitch, Aliocha 
Govchkoff, Tikhon and Melanie, After the Ball, The 



RELIGION AND POLITICS 253 

On the other hand he was boldly and ar- 
dently casting his mystical and polemical writ- 
ings upon the social battlefield. From 1900 
to 1910 such work absorbed the greater part 
of his time and energy. Russia was passing 
through an alarming crisis ; for a moment the 
empire of the Tsars seemed to totter on its 
foundations and about to fall in ruin. The 
Russo-Japanese War, the disasters which fol- 
lowed it, the revolutionary troubles, the mu- 
tinies in the army and the fleet, the massacres, 
the agrarian disorders, seemed to mark "the 
end of a world," to quote the title of one of 

Moon Shines in the Dark, A Young Tsar, What I Saw 
in a Dream, Who is the Murderer? (containing social 
ideas), Modern Socialism, a comedy; The - Learned 
Woman, Childish Wisdom, sketches of children who con- 
verse upon moral subjects; The Living Corpse, a drama 
in seventeen tableaux; 77 is all her Fault, a peasant 
comedy in two acts, directed against alcohol (apparently 
Tolstoy's last literary work, as he wrote it in May— June, 
1910), and a number of social studies. It is announced 
that they will form two octavo volumes of six hundred 
pages each. 

But the essential work as yet unpublished is Tolstoy's 
Journal, which covers forty years of his life, and will fill, 
so it is said, no less than thirty volumes. 



254 TOLSTOY 

Tolstoy's writings. The height of the crisis 
was reached in 1904 and 1905. During these 
years Tolstoy published a remarkable series of 
works: War and Revolution, The Great 
Crime, The End of a World. During the 
last ten years of his life he occupied a situation 
unique not only in Russia but in the world. 
He was alone, a stranger to all the parties, to 
all countries, and rejected by his Church, 
which had excommunicated him. 4 The 
logic of his reason and the revolutionary char- 
acter of his faith had "led him to this 
dilemma; to live a stranger to other men, or 
a stranger to the truth." He recalls the 
Russian proverb : "An old man who lies is a 
rich man who steals," and he severs himself 
from mankind in order to speak the truth. 
He tells the whole truth, and to all. The old 
hunter of lies continues, unweariedly, to mark 
down all superstitions, religious or social, and 
all fetishes. The only exceptions are the old 

4 The excommunication of Tolstoy by the Holy Synod 
was declared on February 22, 1901. The excuse was a 
chapter of Resurrection relating to Mass and the Eucha- 
rist. This chapter has unhappily been suppressed in the 
French edition. 



RELIGION AND POLITICS 255 

maleficent powers — the persecutrix, the 
Church, and the imperial autocracy. Per- 
haps his enmity towards them was in some 
degree appeased now that all were casting 
stones at them. They were familiar; there- 
fore they were already not so formidable! 
After all, too, the Church and the Tsar were 
carrying on their peculiar trades; they were 
at least not deceptive. Tolstoy, in his letter to 
the Tsar Nikolas II., 5 although he speaks the 
truth in a manner entirely unaccommodating 
to the man as sovereign, is full of gentleness for 
the sovereign as man ; addressing him as "dear 
brother," praying him to "pardon him if he 
has hurt him unintentionally," and signing 
himself, "Your brother who wishes you true 
happiness." 

What Tolstoy can least find it in him 
to pardon — what he denounces with the ut- 
most hatred — are the new lies; not the old 
ones, which are no longer able to deceive; not 
despotism, but the illusion of liberty. It is 
difficult to say which he hates the more among 

B On the nationalisation of the soil. ( The Great 
Crime, 1905.) 



256 TOLSTOY 

the followers of the newer idols: whether the 
Socialists or the "Liberals." 

He had a long-standing antipathy for the 
Liberals. It had seized upon him suddenly 
when, as an officer fresh from Sebastopol, he 
found himself in the society of the literary 
men of St. Petersburg. It had been one of 
the causes of his misunderstanding with 
Tourgenev. The arrogant noble, the man of 
ancient race, could not support these "intellec- 
tuals," with their profession of making the 
nation happy, whether by its will or against it, 
by forcing their Utopian schemes upon it. 
Very much a Russian, and of the old stamp, 6 
he instinctively distrusted all liberal innova- 
tions, and the constitutional ideas which came 
from the West; and his two journeys abroad 
only intensified his prejudices. On his return 
from his first journey he wrote: 

"To avoid the ambition of Liberalism." 

On his return from the second: 

"A privileged society has no right whatso- 

6 "A 'Great- Russian/ touched with Finnish blood." 
(M. Leroy-Beaulieu.) 



RELIGION AND POLITICS 257 

ever to educate in its own way the masses of 
which it knows nothing." 

In Anna Karenin he freely expresses his 
contempt for Liberals in general. Levine re- 
fuses to associate himself with the work of the 
provincial institutions for educating the peo- 
ple, and the innovations which are the order 
of the day. The picture of the elections to 
the provincial assembly exposes the fool's 
bargain by which the country changes its an- 
cient Conservative administration for a 
Liberal regime — nothing is really altered, ex- 
cept that there is one lie the more, while the 
masters are of inferior blood. 

"We are not worth very much perhaps," 
says the representative of the aristocracy, "but 
none the less we have lasted a thousand years." 

Tolstoy fulminates against the manner in 
which the Liberals abuse the words, "The 
People: The Will of the People." What 
do they know of the people? Who are the 
People? 

But it is more especially when the Liberal 
movement seemed on the point of succeeding 



258 TOLSTOY 

and achieving the convocation of the first 
Duma that Tolstoy expressed most violently 
his disapprobation of its constitutional ideas. 
"During the last few years the deformation 
of Christianity has given rise to a new species 
of fraud, which has rooted our peoples yet 
more firmly in their servility. With the help 
of a complicated system of parliamentary elec- 
tions it was suggested to them that by electing 
their representatives directly they were par- 
ticipating in the government, and that in obey- 
ing them they were obeying their own will: 
in short, that they were free. This is a piece 
of imposture. The people cannot express its 
will, even with the aid of universal suffrage 
— i, because no such collective will of a nation 
of many millions of inhabitants could exist; 
2, because even if it existed the majority of 
voices would not be its expression. Without 
insisting on the fact that those elected would 
legislate and administrate not for the general 
good but in order to maintain themselves in 
power — without counting on the fact of the 
popular corruption due to pressure and elec- 
toral corruption — this fraud is particularly 



RELIGION AND POLITICS 259 

harmful because of the presumptuous slavery 
into which all those who submit to it fall. 
. . . These free men recall the prisoners 
who imagine that they are enjoying freedom 
when they have the right to elect those of their 
gaolers who are entrusted with the interior 
policing of the prison. ... A member of 
a despotic State may be entirely free, even in 
the midst of the most brutal violence. But 
a member of a constitutional State is always 
a slave, for he recognises the legality of the 
violence done him. . . . And now men 
wish to lead the Russian people into the same 
state of constitutional slavery in which the 
other European peoples dwell! 7 

7 The End of a World (i 905-6). See the telegram 
addressed by Tolstoy to an American journal: "The agi- 
tation in the Zemstvos has as its object the limitation of 
despotic power and the establishment of a representative 
government. Whether or no they succeed the result will 
be a postponement of any true social improvement. Po- 
litical agitation, while producing the unfortunate illusion 
of such improvement by external means, arrests true 
progress, as may be proved by the example of all the con- 
stitutional States — France, England, America, etc." 
(Preface to the French translation of The Great Crime, 
1905.) 



260 TOLSTOY 

In his hostility towards Liberalism con- 
tempt was his dominant feeling. In respect 
of Socialism his dominant feeling was — or 
rather would have been — hatred, if Tolstoy 
had not forbidden himself to hate any- 
thing whatever. He detested it doubly, 

In a long and interesting letter to a lady who asked 
him to join a Committee for the Propagation of Reading 
and Writing among the People, Tolstoy expressed yet 
other objections to the Liberals. They have always 
played the part of dupes; they act as the accomplices of 
the autocracy through fear ; their participation in the gov- 
ernment gives the latter a moral prestige, and accustoms 
them to compromises, which quickly make them the in- 
struments of power. Alexander II. used to say that all 
the Liberals were ready to sell themselves for honours if 
not for money; Alexander III. was able, without dan- 
ger, to eradicate the liberal work of his father. "The 
Liberals whispered among themselves that this did not 
please them; but they continued to attend the tribunals, 
to serve the State and the press ; in the press they alluded 
to those things to which allusion was allowed, and were 
silent upon matters to which allusion was prohibited." 
They did the same under Nikolas II. "When this young 
man, who knows nothing and understands nothing, re- 
plies tactlessly and with effrontery to the representa- 
tives of the people, do the Liberals protest? By no means. 
. . . From every side they send the young Tsar their 
cowardly and flattering congratulations." (Further Let- 
ters,) 



RELIGION AND POLITICS 261 

because Socialism was the amalgamation of 
two lies: the lie of liberty and the lie of 
science. Does it not profess to be founded 
upon some sort of economic science, whose 
laws absolutely rule the progress of the world? 
Tolstoy is very hard upon science. He has 
pages full of terrible irony concerning this 
modern superstition and "these futile prob- 
lems : the origin of species, spectrum analysis, 
the nature of radium, the theory of numbers, 
animal fossils and other nonsense, to which 
poeple attach as much importance to-day as 
they attributed in the Middle Ages to the 
Immaculate Conception or the Duality of 
Substance." He derides these "sermons of 
science, who, just as the servants of the 
Church, persuade themselves and others that 
they are saving humanity; who, like the 
Church, believe in their own infallibility, 
never agree among themselves, divide them- 
selves into sects, and, like the Church, are the 
chief cause of unmannerliness, moral igno- 
rance, and the long delay of humanity in free- 
ing itself from the evils under which it suffers ; 
for they have rejected the only thing that 



262 TOLSTOY 

could unite humanity: the religious con- 
science." 8 

But his anxiety redoubles, and his indig- 
nation bursts its bounds, when he sees the 
dangerous weapon of the new fanaticism in 
the hands of those who profess to be regenera- 
ting humanity. Every revolutionist saddens 
him when he resorts to violence. But the in- 
tellectual and theoretical revolutionary in- 
spires him with horror: he is a pedantic 
murderer, an arrogant, sterile intelligence, 
who loves not men but ideas. 9 

8 War and Revolution. 

In Resurrection, at the hearing of Maslova's appeal, in 
the Senate, it is a materialistic Darwinist who is most 
strongly opposed to the revision, because he is secretly 
shocked that Nekhludov should wish, as a matter of duty, 
to marry a prostitute ; any manifestation of duty, and still 
more, of religious feeling, having the effect upon him of a 
personal insult. 

9 As a type, take Novodvorov, the revolutionary leader 
in Resurrection, whose excessive vanity and egoism have 
sterilised a fine intelligence. No imagination; "a total ab- 
sence of the moral and aesthetic qualities which produce 
doubt." 

Following his footsteps like a shadow is Markel, the 
artisan who has become a revolutionist through humilia- 
tion and the desire for revenge; a passionate worshipper 



RELIGION AND POLITICS 

Moreover, these ideas are of a low order. 

"The object of Socialism is the satisfaction 
of the lowest needs of man : his material well- 
being. And it cannot attain even this end by 
the means it recommends." 10 

At heart, he is without love. He feels only 
hatred for the oppressors and "a black envy 
for the assured and easy life of the rich: a 
greed like that of the flies that gather about 
ordure." " When Socialism is victorious the 
aspect of the world will be terrible. The 
European horde will rush upon the weak and 
barbarous peoples with redoubled force, and 
will enslave them, in order that the ancient 
proletariats of Europe may debauch them- 

of science, which he cannot comprehend ; a fanatical anti- 
clerical and an ascetic. 

In Three More Dead or The Divine and the Human 
we shall find a few specimens of the new generation of 
revolutionaries: Romane and his friends, who despise the 
old Terrorists, and profess to attain their ends scien- 
tifically, by transforming an agricultural into an industrial 
people. 

10 Letters to the Japanese Izo-Abe, 1904. {Further 
Letters.) 

11 Conversations, reported by Teneromo (published in 
Revolutionaries, 1906). 



264 TOLSTOY 

selves at their leisure by idle luxury, as did 
the people of Rome. 12 

Happily the principal energies of Social- 
ism spend themselves in smoke — in speeches, 
like those of M. Jaures. 

"What an admirable orator! There is 
something of everything in his speeches — and 
there is nothing. . . . Socialism is a little 
like our Russian orthodoxy: you press it, you 
push it into its last trenches, you think you 
have got it fast, and suddenly it turns round 
and tells you: 'No, I'm not the one you 
think, I'm somebody else.' And it slips out 
of your hands. . . . Patience! Let time 
do its work. There will be socialistic theories, 
as there are women's fashions, which soon 
pass from the drawing-room to the servants' 
hall." 13 

Although Tolstoy waged war in this man- 
ner upon the Liberals and Socialists, it was 
not — far from it — to leave the field free for 

12 Conversations, reported by Teneromo (published in 
Revolutionaries, 1906). 

13 Conversation with M. Paul Boyer. (Le Temps, 
November 4, 1902.) 



RELIGION AND POLITICS 265 

autocracy; on the contrary, it was that the 
battle might be fought in all its fierceness be- 
tween the old world and the new, after the 
army of disorderly and dangerous elements 
had been eliminated. For Tolstoy too was a 
believer in the Revolution. But his Revolu- 
tion was of a very different colour to that of 
the revolutionaries; it was rather that of a 
believer of the Middle Ages, who looked on 
the morrow, perhaps that very day, for the 
reign of the Holy Spirit. 

"I believe that at this very hour the great 
revolution is beginning which has been pre- 
paring for two thousand years in the Christian 
world — the revolution which will substitute 
for corrupted Christianity and the system of 
domination which proceeds therefrom the 
true Christianity, the basis of equality between 
men and of the true liberty to which all beings 
endowed with reason aspire." 14 

What time does he choose, this seer and 
prophet, for his announcement of the new era 
of love and happiness? The darkest hour of 
Russian history; the hour of disaster and of 

14 The End of a World. 



266 TOLSTOY 

shame! Superb power of creative faith! All 
around it is light — even in darkness. Tolstoy- 
saw in death the signs of renewal; in the 
calamities of the war in Manchuria, in the 
downfall of the Russian armies, in the fright- 
ful anarchy and the bloody struggle of the 
classes. His logic — the logic of a dream! — 
drew from the victory of Japan the astonish- 
ing conclusion that Russia should withdraw 
from all warfare, because the non-Christian 
peoples will always have the advantage in war- 
fare over the Christian peoples "who have 
passed through the phase of servile submis- 
sion." Does this mean the abdication of the 
Russian people? No; this is pride at its su- 
premest. Russia should withdraw from all 
warfare because she must accomplish "the 
great revolution." 

"The Revolution of 1905, which will set 
men free from brutal oppression, must com- 
mence in Russia. It is beginning." 

Why must Russia play the part of the 
chosen people? Because the new Revolution 
must before all repair "The Great Grime" 
the great monopolisation of the soil for the 



RELIGION AND POLITICS 267 

profit of a few thousands of wealthy men and 
the slavery of millions of men — the cruellest 
of enslavements; 15 and because no people was 
so conscious of this iniquity as the Russian 
people. 16 

15 "The cruellest enslavement is to be deprived of the 
earth, for the slave of a master is the slave of only one; 
but the man deprived of the land is the slave of all the 
world." (The Great Crime.) 

16 Russia was actually in a somewhat special situation ; 
and although Tolstoy may have been wrong to found his 
generalisations concerning other European States upon 
the condition of Russia, we cannot be surprised that he 
was most sensible to the sufferings which touched him 
most nearly. See, in The Great Crime, his conversations 
on the road to Toula with the peasants, who were all in 
want of bread because they lacked land, and who were 
all secretly waiting for the land to be restored to them. 
The agricultural population of Russia forms 8o per cent, 
of the nation. A hundred million of men, says Tolstoy, 
are dying of hunger because of the seizure of the soil by 
the landed proprietors. When people speak to them of 
remedying their evils through the agency of the Press, or 
by the separation of Church and State, or by nationalist 
representation, or even by the eight-hours day, they impu- 
dently mock at them: 

"Those who are apparently looking everywhere for the 
means of bettering the condition of the masses of the peo- 
ple remind one of what one sees in the theatre, when all 
the spectators have an excellent view of an actor who 



268 TOLSTOY 

Again, and more especially, because the 
Russian people is of all peoples most thor- 
oughly steeped in the true Christianity, so that 
the coming revolution should realise, in the 
name of Christ, the law of union and of love. 
Now this law of love cannot be fulfilled un- 
less it is based upon the law of non-resistance 
to evil. 17 This non-resistance (let us mark 
this well, we who have the misfortune to see 
in it simply an Utopian fad peculiar to Tol- 
stoy and to a few dreamers) has always been 
an essential trait of the Russian people. 

"The Russian people has always assumed, 

is supposed to be concealed, while his fellow-players, who 
also have a full view of him, pretend not to see him, and 
endeavour to distract one another's attention from him." 

There is no remedy but that of returning the soil to the 
labouring people. As a solution of the property question, 
Tolstoy recommends the doctrine of Henry George and 
his suggested single tax upon the value of the soil. This 
is his economic gospel; he returns to it unwearied, and 
has assimilated it so thoroughly that in his writings he 
often uses entire phrases of George's. 

17 "The law of non-resistance to evil is the keystone of 
the whole building. To admit the law of mutual help 
while misunderstanding the precept of non-resistance is to 
build the vault without sealing the central portion." 
{The End of a World.) 



RELIGION AND POLITICS 269 

with regard to power, an attitude entirely- 
strange to the other peoples of Europe. It 
has never entered upon a conflict with power; 
it has never participated in it, and conse- 
quently has never been depraved by it. It has 
regarded power as an evil which must be 
avoided. An ancient legend represents the 
Russians as appealing to the Varingians to 
come and govern them. The majority of the 
Russians have always preferred to submit to 
acts of violence rather than respond with 
violence or participate therein. They have 
therefore always submitted. 

"A voluntary submission, having nothing in 
common with servile obedience. 18 

"The true Christian may submit, indeed it 
is impossible for him not to submit without 
a struggle to no matter what violence ; but he 

18 In a letter written in 1900 to a friend {Further Let- 
ters) Tolstoy complains of the false interpretation given 
to his doctrine of non-resistance. "People," he says, "con- 
found Do not oppose evil by evil with Do not oppose evil: 
that is to say, Be indifferent to evil. . . ." "Where- 
as the conflict with evil is the sole object of Christianity, 
and the commandment of non-resistance to evil is given as 
the most effectual means of conflict." 



270 TOLSTOY 

could not obey it — that is, he could not recog- 
nise it as legitimate." 19 

At the time of writing these lines Tolstoy 
was still subject to the emotion caused by one 
of the most tragical examples of this heroic 
nonresistance of a people — the bloody mani- 
festation of January 22nd in St. Petersburg, 
when an unarmed crowd, led by Father Ga- 
pon, allowed itself to be shot down without 
a cry of hatred or a gesture of self-defence. 

For a long time the Old Believers, known 
in Russia as the Sectators, had been obstinately 
practising, in spite of persecution, non-obe- 
dience to the State, and had refused to recog- 
nise the legitimacy of its power. 20 The 
absurdity of the Russo-Japanese War enabled 
this state of mind to spread without difficulty 
through the rural districts. Refusals of mili- 
tary service became more and more general; 
and the more brutally they were punished the 
more stubborn the revolt grew in secret. In 

19 The End of a World. 

20 Tolstoy has drawn two types of these "Sectators," 
one in Resurrection (towards the end) and one In Three 
More Dead. 



RELIGION AND POLITICS 271 

the provinces, moreover, whole races who 
knew nothing of Tolstoy had given the exam- 
ple of an absolute and passive refusal to obey 
the State — the Doukhobors of the Caucasus 
as early as 1898 and the Georgians of the 
Gouri towards 1905. Tolstoy influenced these 
movements far less than they influenced him ; 
and the interest of his writings lies in the fact 
that in spite of the criticisms of those writers 
who were of the party of revolution, as was 
Gorky, 21 he was the mouthpiece of the Old 
Russian people. 

The attitude which he preserved, in respect 
of men who at the peril of their lives were 
putting into practice the principles which he 
professed, 22 was one of extreme modesty and 

21 After Tolstoy's condemnation of the upheaval in the 
Zemstvos, Gorky, making himself the interpreter of the 
displeasure of his friends, wrote as follows: "This man 
has become the slave of his theory. For a long time he 
has isolated himself from the life of Russia, and he no 
longer listens to the voice of the people. He hovers over 
Russia at too great a height." 

22 It was a bitter trial to him that he could not con- 
trive to be persecuted. He had a thirst for martyrdom; 
but the Government very wisely took good care not to 
satisfy him. 



<TO TOLSTOY 

dignity. Neither to the Doukhobors and 
the Gourians nor to the refractory soldiers 
did he assume the pose of a master or 
teacher. 

"They are persecuting my friends all around me, and 
leaving me in peace, although if any one is dangerous it 
is I. Evidently I am not worth persecution, and I am 
ashamed of the fact." (Letter to Teneromo, 1892, 
Further Letters.) 

"Evidently I am not worthy of persecution, and I shall 
have to die like this, without having ever been able to tes- 
tify to the truth by physical suffering." (To Teneromo, 
May 16, 1892, ibid.) 

"It hurts me to be at liberty." (To Teneromo, June 
1, 1894, ibid.) 

That he was at liberty was, Heaven knows, no fault 
of his! He insults the Tsars, he attacks the fatherland, 
"that ghastly fetish to which men sacrifice their life and 
liberty and reason." {The End of a World.) Then 
see, in War and Revolution, the summary of Russian his- 
tory. It is a gallery of monsters: "The maniac Ivan 
the Terrible, the drunkard Peter I., the ignorant cook, 
Catherine I., the sensual and profligate Elizabeth, the de- 
generate Paul, the parricide Alexander I. [the only one 
of them for whom Tolstoy felt a secret liking], the cruel 
and ignorant Nikolas I. ; Alexander II., unintelligent and 
evil rather than good; Alexander III., an undeniable sot, 
brutal and ignorant; Nikolas II., an innocent young offi- 
cer of hussars, with an entourage of coxcombs, a young 
man who knows nothing and understands nothing." 



RELIGION AND POLITICS 273 

"He who suffers no trials can teach nothing 
to him who does so suffer." 

He implores "the forgiveness of all those 
whom his words and his writings may have 
caused to suffer." 23 

He never urges any one to refuse military 
service. It is a matter for every man to de- 
cide for himself. If he discusses the matter 
with any one who is hesitating, "he always ad- 
vises him not to refuse obedience so long as it 
would not be morally impossible." For if a 
man hesitates it is because he is not ripe; and 
"it is better to have one soldier the more than 
a renegade or hypocrite, which is what be- 
comes of those who undertake a task beyond 
their strength." 24 He distrusts the resolution 
of the refractory Gontcharenko. He fears 
"that this young man may have been carried 
away by vanity and vainglory, not by the love 
of God." 25 To the Doukhobors he writes 
that they should not persist in their refusal of 

23 Letter to Gontcharenko, a "refractory," January 17, 
1903. {Further Letters.) 

2 * Letter to a friend, 1900. {Correspondence.) 
28 To Gontcharenko, February 2, 1903 {ibid.). 



274 TOLSTOY 

obedience out of pride, but "if they are capa- 
ble of so doing, they should save their weaker 
women and their children. No one will 
blame them for that." They must persist 
"only if the spirit of Christ is indeed within 
them, because then they will be happy to suf- 
fer." 26 In any case he prays those who are 
persecuted "at any cost not to break their af- 
fectionate relations with those who persecute 
them." 27 One must love even Herod, as he 
says in a letter to a friend: "You say, 'One 
cannot love Herod.' — I do not know, but I 
feel, and you also, that one must love him. I 
know, and you also, that if I do not love him 
I suffer, that there is no life in me." 28 

The Divine purity, the unvarying ardour of 
this love, which in the end can no longer be 
contented even by the words of the Gospel: 
"Love thy neighbour as thyself," because he 
finds in them a taint of egoism! 



29 



26 To the Doukhobors of the Caucasus, 1898 (ibid.). 

27 To Gontcharenko, January 17, 1903 (ibid.). 

28 To a friend, November, 1901. (Correspondence.) 

29 "It is like a crack in a pneumatic machine ; all the 
vapour of egoism that we wish to drain from the human 
soul re-enters by it." He ingeniously strives to prove 



RELIGION AND POLITICS Tib 

Too vast a love in the opinion of some ; and 
so free from human egoism that it wastes it- 
self in the void. Yet who more than Tolstoy 
distrusts "abstract love"? 

"The greatest modern sin : the abstract love 
of humanity, impersonal love for those who 
are — somewhere, out of sight. . . . To 
love those we do not know, those whom we 
shall never meet, is so easy a thing! There is 
no need to sacrifice anything; and at the same 
time we are so pleased with ourselves! The 
conscience is fooled. — No. We must love 
our neighbours — those we live with, and who 
are in our way and embarrass us." 30 

I have read in most of the studies of Tol- 
stoy's work that his faith and philosophy are 
not original. It is true; the beauty of these 
ideas is eternal and can never appear a mo- 
mentary fashion. Others complain of their 
Utopian character. This also is true; they 

that the original text has been wrongly read ; that the ex- 
act wording of the Second Commandment was in fact 
"Love thy neighbour as Himself (as God)." (Conver- 
sations with Teneromo.) 

80 Conversations with Teneromo. 



276 TOLSTOY 

are Utopian, the New Testament is Utopian. 
A prophet is a Utopian; he treads the earth 
but sees the life of eternity; and that this appa- 
rition should have been granted to us, that we 
should have seen among us the last of the 
prophets, that the greatest of our artists should 
wear this aureole on his brow — there, it seems 
to me, is a fact more novel and of far greater 
importance to the world than one religion the 
more, or a new philosophy. Those are blind 
who do not perceive the miracle of this great 
mind, the incarnation of fraternal love in the 
midst of a people and a century stained with 
the blood of hatred! 



CHAPTER XVII 

OLD AGE 



CHAPTER XVII 

OLD AGE 

His face had taken on definite lines; had be- 
come as it will remain in the memory of men : 
the large countenance, crossed by the arch of 
a double furrow; the white, bristling eye- 
brows; the patriarchal beard, recalling that 
of the Moses of Dijon. The aged face was 
gentler and softer; it bore the traces of illness, 
of sorrow, of disappointment, and of affec- 
tionate kindness. What a change from the 
almost animal brutality of the same face at 
twenty, and the heavy rigidity of the soldier 
of Sebastopol! But the eyes have always the 
same profound fixity, the same look of loyalty, 
which hides nothing and from which nothing 
is hidden. 

Nine years before his death, in his reply to 
the Holy Synod (April 17, 1901) Tolstoy had 
said: 

"I owe it to my faith to live in peace and 

279 



280 TOLSTOY 

gladness, and to be able also, in peace and 
gladness, to travel on towards death." 

Reading this I am reminded of the ancient 
saying: "that we should call no man happy 
until he is dead." 

Were they lasting, this peace and joy that 
he then boasted of possessing? 

The hopes of the "great Revolution" of 
1905 had vanished. The shadows had gath- 
ered more thickly; the expected light had 
never risen. To the upheavals of the revolu- 
tionaries exhaustion had succeeded. Nothing 
of the old injustice was altered, except that 
poverty had increased. Even in 1906 Tolstoy 
had lost a little of his confidence in the historic 
vocation of the Russian Slavs, and his ob- 
stinate faith sought abroad for other peoples 
whom he might invest with this mission. He 
thought of the "great and wise Chinese na- 
tion." He believed "that the peoples of the 
Orient were called to recover that liberty 
which the peoples of the Occident had lost 
almost without chance of recovery" ; and that 
China, at the head of the Asiatic peoples, 
would accomplish .the transformation of 



OLD AGE 281 

humanity in the way of Tao 2 the eternal 
Law. 1 

A hope quickly destroyed: the China of Lao- 
Tse and Confucius was decrying its bygone 
wisdom, as Japan had already done in order 
to imitate Europe. 2 The persecuted Doukho- 
bors had migrated to Canada, and there, to the 
scandal of Tolstoy, they immediately reverted 
to the property system. 3 The Gourians were 
scarcely delivered from the yoke of the State 
when they began to destroy those who 
did not think as they did; and the Russian 
troops were called out to put matters in order. 
The very Jews, "whose native country had 
thitherto been the fairest a man could desire 
— the Book," 4 were attacked by the malady 

1 Letter to the Chinese, October, 1906. {Further Let- 
ters. ) 

2 Tolstoy expressed a fear that this might happen in the 
above letter. 

3 "It was hardly worth while to refuse military and po- 
lice service only to revert to property, which is main- 
tained only by those two services. Those who enter the 
service and profit by property act better than those who 
refuse all service and enjoy property." (Letter to the 
Doukhobors of Canada, 1899. Further Letters.) 

4 In the Conversations with Teneromo there is a fine 



282 TOLSTOY 

of Zionism, that movement of false national- 
ism, "which is flesh of the flesh of contempo- 
rary Europeanism, or rather its rickety 
child." 5 

Tolstoy was saddened, but not discouraged. 
He had faith in God and in the future. 

"All would be perfect if one could grow a 
forest in the wink of an eye. Unhappily, this 
is impossible; we must wait until the seed 
germinates, until the shoots push up, the leaves 
come, and then the stem which finally becomes 
a tree." 6 

But many trees are needed to make a forest; 
and Tolstoy was alone; glorious, but alone. 
Men wrote to him from all parts of the world ; 
from Mohammedan countries, from China 
and Japan, where Resurrection was translated, 
and where his ideas upon "the restitution of 

page dealing with "the wise Jew, who, immersed in this 
Book, has not seen the centuries crumble above his head, 
nor the peoples that appear and disappear from the face 
of the earth." 

5 "To see the progress of Europe in the horrors of the 
modern State, the bloodstained State, and to wish to cre- 
ate a new Judenstaat is an abominable sin." {Ibid,) 

* Appeal to Political Men, 1905. 



OLD AGE 285 

the land to the people" were being propa- 
gated. 7 The American papers interviewed 
him ; the French consulted him on matters of 
art, or the separation of Church and State. 8 

But he had not three hundred disciples, 
and he knew it. Moreover, he did not take 
pains to make them. He repulsed the at- 
tempts of his friends to form groups of 
Tolstoyans. 

"We must not go in search of one another, 
but we must all seek God. . . . You say: 
'Together it is easier.' — What? To labour, to 
reap, yes. But to draw near to God — one can 
only do so in isolation. ... I see the 
world as an enormous temple in which the 
light falls from on high and precisely in the 
middle. To become united we must all go 
towards the light. Then all of us, come to- 
gether from all directions, will find ourselves 

7 In the appendix to The Great Crime and in the 
French translation of Advice to the Ruled is the appeal of 
a Japanese society for the Re-establishment of the Liberty 
of the Earth. 

8 Letter to Paul Sabatier, November 7, 1906. 
(Further Letters.) 



284 TOLSTOY 

in the company of men we did not look for; 
in that is the joy." 9 

How many have found themselves together 
under the ray which falls from the dome? 
What matter! It is enough to be one and 
alone if one is with God. 

"As only a burning object can communicate 
fire to other objects, so only the true faith and 
life of a man can communicate themselves to 
other men and to spread the truth." 10 

Perhaps ; but to what point was this isolated 
faith able to assure Tolstoy of happiness? 
How far he was, in his latter days, from the 
voluntary calm of a Goethe! One would al- 
most say that he avoided it, fled from it, hated 
it. 

"One must thank God for being discon- 
tented with oneself. If one could always be 
so! The discord of life with what ought to 
be is precisely the sign of life itself, the move- 
ment upwards from the lesser to the greater, 
from worse to better. And this discord is the 

9 Letters to Teneromo, June, 1882, and to a friend, 
November, 1901. {Further Letters.) 

10 War and Revolution, 



OLD AGE 285 

condition of good. It is an evil when a man 
is calm and satisfied with himself." " 

He imagines the following subject for a 
novel — showing that the persistent discontent 
of a Levine or a Besoukhov was not yet extinct 
in him: 

"I often picture to myself a man brought 
up in revolutionary circles, and at first a revo- 
lutionist, then a populist, then a socialist, then 
orthodox, then a monk at Afone, then an athe- 
ist, a good paterfamilias, and finally a 
Doukhobor. He takes up everything and is 
always forsaking everything; men deride him, 
for he has performed nothing, and dies, for- 
gotten, in a hospital. Dying, he thinks he 
has wasted his life. And yet he is a saint." 12 

Had he still doubts — he, so full of faith? 
Who knows? In a man who has remained 
robust in body and mind even into old age life 
cannot come to a halt at a definite stage of 
thought. Life goes onwards. 

11 War and Revolution, 

12 Perhaps this refers to the History of a Doukhobor, 
the title of which figures in the list of Tolstoy's unpub- 
lished works. 



286 TOLSTOY 

"Movement is life." 13 , 

Many things must have changed within him 
during the last few years. Did he not modify 
his opinion of revolutionaries? Who can 
even say that his faith in non-resistance to evil 
was not at length a little shaken? Even in 
Resurrection the relations of Nekhludov with 
the condemned "politicals" completely change 
his ideas as to the Russian revolutionary 
party. 

"Up till that time he had felt an aversion 
for their cruelty, their criminal dissimulation, 
their attempts upon life, their sufficiency, their 
self-contentment, their insupportable vanity. 
But when he saw them more closely, when he 
saw how they were treated by the authorities, 
he understood that they could not be other- 
wise." 

And he admires their high ideal of duty, 
which implies total self-sacrifice. 

Since 1900, however, the revolutionary tide 
had risen; starting from the "intellectuals," it 

13 "Suppose that all the men who had the truth were 
to be installed all together on an island. Would that be 
life?" (To a friend, March, 1901. Further Letters.) 



OLD AGE 287 

had gained the people, and was obscurely mov- 
ing amidst the thousands of the poor. The 
advance-guard of their threatening army de- 
filed below Tolstoy's window at Yasnaya Pol- 
yana. Three tales, published by the Mercure 
de France, 1 * which were among the last pages 
written by Tolstoy, give us a glimpse of the 
sorrow and the perplexity which this spectacle 
caused him. The years were indeed remote 
when the pilgrims wandered through the 
countryside of Toula, pious and simple of 
heart. Now he saw the invasion of starving 
wanderers. They came to him every day. 
Tolstoy, who chatted with them, was struck by 
the hatred that animated them; they no 
longer, as before, saw the rich as "people who 
save their souls by distributing alms, but as 
bandits, brigands, who drink the blood of the 
labouring people." Many were educated 
men, ruined, on the brink of that despair 
which makes a man capable of anything. 

"It is not in the deserts and the forests, but 
in slums of cities and on the great highways 
that the barbarians are reared who will do to 

14 December i, 1910. 



288 TOLSTOY 

modern civilisation what the Huns and Van- 
dals did to the ancient civilisation." 

So said Henry George. And Tolstoy adds : 
"The Vandals are already here in Russia, 
and they will be particularly terrible among 
our profoundly religious people, because we 
know nothing of the curbs, the convenances 
and public opinion, which are so strongly de- 
veloped among European peoples." 

Tolstoy often received letters from these 
rebels, protesting against his doctrine of non- 
resistance to evil, and saying that the evil that 
the rulers and the wealthy do to the people 
can only be replied to by cries of "Vengeance! 
Vengeance! Vengeance!" Did Tolstoy still 
condemn them? We do not know. But 
when, a few days later, he saw in his own 
village the villagers weeping while their sheep 
and their samovars were seized and taken 
from them by callous authorities, he also cried 
vengeance in vain against these thieves, "these 
ministers and their acolytes, who are engaged 
in the brandy traffic, or in teaching men to 
murder, or condemning men to deportation, 
prison, or the gallows — these men, all per- 



OLD AGE 289 

fectly convinced that the samovars, sheep, 
calves, and linen which they took from the 
miserable peasants would find their highest 
use in furthering the distillation of brandy 
which poisons the drinker, in the manufacture 
of murderous weapons, in the construction of 
jails and convict prisons, and above all in the 
distribution of appointments to their assistants 
and themselves." 

It is sad, after a whole life lived in the ex- 
pectation and the proclamation of the reign 
of love, to be forced to close one's eyes in the 
midst of these threatening visions, and to feel 
one's whole position crumbling. It is still 
sadder for one with the impeccably truthful 
conscience of a Tolstoy to be forced to con- 
fess to oneself that one's life has not been 
lived entirely in accordance with one's prin- 
ciples. 

Here we touch upon the most pitiful point 
of these latter years — should we say of the last 
thirty years? — and we can only touch upon it 
with a pious and tentative hand, for this sor- 
row, of which Tolstoy endeavoured to keep 
the secret, belongs not only to him who is dead, 



290 TOLSTOY 

but to others who are living, whom he loved, 
and who loved him. 

He was never able to communicate his faith 
to those who were dearest to him — his wife 
and children. We have seen how the loyal 
comrade, who had so valiantly shared his 
artistic life and labour, suffered when he de- 
nied his faith in art for a different and a moral 
faith, which she did not understand. Tolstoy 
suffered no less at feeling that he was misun- 
derstood by his nearest friend. 

"I feel in all my being," he wrote to Tene- 
romo, "the truth of these words : that the hus- 
band and the wife are not separate beings, but 
are as one. ... I wish most earnestly that 
I had the power to transmit to my wife a por- 
tion of that religious conscience which gives 
me the possibility of sometimes raising myself 
above the sorrows of life. I hope that it will 
be given her; very probably not by me, but 
by God, although this conscience is hardly ac- 
cessible to women." 15 

15 May 1 6, 1892. Tolstoy's wife was then mourning 
the loss of a little boy, and he could do nothing to con- 
sole her. 



OLD AGE 291 

It seems that this wish was never gratified. 
Countess Tolstoy loved and admired the purity 
of heart, the candid heroism, and the good- 
ness of the great man who was "as one" with 
her; she saw that "he marched ahead of the 
host and showed men the way they should fol- 
low" ; 16 when the Holy Synod excommuni- 
cated him she bravely undertook his defence 
and insisted on sharing the danger which 
threatened him. But she could not force her- 
self to believe what she did not believe; and 
Tolstoy was too sincere to urge her to pretend 
— he who loathed the petty deceits of faith 
and love even more than the negation of faith 
and love. 17 How then could he constrain her, 
not believing, to modify her life, to sacrifice 
her fortune and that of her children? 

With his children the rift was wider still. 
M. Leroy-Beaulieu, who saw Tolstoy with his 
family at Yasnaya Polyana, says that "at table, 
when the father was speaking, the sons barely 

16 Letter of January, 1883. 

17 "I should never reproach any one for having no re- 
ligion. The shocking thing is when men lie and pretend 
to religion." And further: "May God preserve us from 
pretending to love ; it is worse than hatred." 



292 TOLSTOY 

concealed their weariness and unbelief." 18 
His faith had only slightly affected two or 
three of his daughters, of whom one, Marie, 
was dead. He was morally isolated in the 
heart of his family." "He had scarcely any 
one but his youngest daughter and his doc- 
tor" 19 to understand him. 

He suffered from this mental loneliness; 
and he suffered from the social relations which 
were forced upon him; the reception of fa- 
tiguing visitors from every quarter of the 
globe; Americans, and the idly curious, who 
wore him out; he suffered from the "luxury" 
in which his family life forced him to live. 
It was a modest luxury, if we are to believe 
the accounts of those who saw him in his sim- 
ple house, with its almost austere appoint- 
ments ; in his little room, with its iron bed, its 
cheap chairs, and its naked walls! But even 
this poor comfort weighed upon him; it was a 
cause of perpetual remorse. In the second of 
the tales published by the Mercure de France 
he bitterly contrasts the spectacle of the pov- 

18 Revue des Deux Monies, December 15, 1910. 

19 Ibid. 



OLD AGE 293 

erty about him with the luxury of his own 
house. 

"My activity," he wrote as early as 1903, 
"however useful it may appear to certain peo- 
ple, loses the greater part of its importance by 
the fact that my life is not entirely in agree- 
ment with my professions." 20 

Why did he not realise this agreement? If 
he could not induce his family to cut them- 
selves off from the world, why did he not leave 
them, go out of their life, thus avoiding the 
sarcasm and reproach of hypocrisy expressed 
by his enemies, who were only too glad to 
follow his example and make it an excuse for 
denying his doctrines? 

He had thought of so doing. For a long 
time he was quite resolved. A remarkable 
letter 21 of his has recently been found and 
published; it was written to his wife on the 
8th of June, 1897. The greater part of it is 
printed below. Nothing could better express 
the secret of his loving and unhappy heart: 

20 To a friend, December 10, 1903. 

21 Figaro , December 27, 1910. It was found among 
Tolstoy's papers after his death. 



294 TOLSTOY 

"For a long time, dear Sophie, I have been 
suffering from the discord between my life 
and my beliefs. I cannot force you to change 
your life or your habits. Neither have I hith- 
erto been able to leave you, for I felt that by 
my departure I should deprive the children, 
still very young, of the little influence I might 
be able to exert over them, and also that I 
should cause you all a great deal of pain. 
But I cannot continue to live as I have lived 
during these last sixteen years, 22 now strug- 
gling against you and irritating you, now suc- 
cumbing myself to the influences and the se- 
ductions to which I am accustomed and which 
surround me. I have resolved now to do what 
I have wished to do for a long time: to go 
away. . . . Just as the Hindoos, when 
they arrive at the sixtieth year, go away into 
the forest; just as every aged and religious man 
wishes to consecrate the last years of his life to 
God and not to jesting, punning, family tittle- 
tattle, and lawn-tennis, so do I with all my 

22 This state of suffering dates, as we see, from 1881 ; 
that is, from the winter passed in Moscow, and Tolstoy's 
discovery of social wretchedness. 



OLD AGE 295 

strength desire peace and solitude, and if not 
an absolute harmony at least not this crying 
discord between my whole life and my con- 
science. If I had gone away openly there 
would have been supplications, discussions, ar- 
guments; I should have weakened, and per- 
haps I should not have carried out my 
decision, and it ought to be carried out. I 
beg you therefore to forgive me if my action 
grieves you. And you in particular, Sophie — 
let me go, do not try to find me, do not be 
angry with me, and do not blame me. The 
fact that I have left you does not prove that 
I have any grievance against you. . . . 
I know that you could not, could not see and 
think with me; this is why you could not 
change your life, could not sacrifice yourself 
to something you did not understand. I do 
not blame you at all; on the contrary, I re- 
member with love and gratitude the thirty- 
five long years of our life together, and above 
all the first half of that period, when, with the 
courage and devotion of your mother's nature, 
you valiantly fulfilled what you saw as your 
mission. You have given to me and the world 



296 TOLSTOY 

what you had to give. You have given much 
maternal love and made great sacrifices. 
. . . But in the latter period of our life, 
in the last fifteen years, our paths have lain 
apart. I cannot believe that I am the guilty 
one; I know that I have changed; it was not 
your doing, nor the world's ; it was because I 
could not do otherwise. I cannot blame you 
for not having followed me, and I shall always 
remember with love what you have given me. 
. . . Good-bye, my dear Sophie. I love 
you." 

"The fact that I have left you/' He did 
not leave her. Poor letter ! It seemed to him 
that it was enough to write, and his resolution 
would be fulfilled. . . . Having written, 
his resolution was already exhausted. "If I 
had gone away openly there would have been 
supplications, I should have weakened." 
. . . There was no need of supplications, 
of discussions ; it was enough for him to see, a 
moment later, those whom he wished to leave; 
he felt that he could not, could not leave them ; 
and he took the letter in his pocket and buried 
it among his papers, with this subscription: 



OLD AGE 297 

"Give this, after my death, to my wife So- 
phie Andreyevna." 

And this was the end of his plan of ^de- 
parture. Was he not strong enough? Was 
he not capable of sacrificing his affections to 
his God? In the Christian annals there is no 
lack of saints with tougher hearts, who never 
hesitated to trample fearlessly underfoot both 
their own affections and those of others. But 
how could he? He was not of their company; 
he was weak: he was a man; and it is for that 
reason that we love him. 

More than fifteen years earlier, on a page 
full of heart-breaking wretchedness, he had 
asked himself: "Well, Leo Tolstoy, are you 
living according to the principles you pro- 
fess?" 

He replied miserably: 

"I am dying of shame; I am guilty; 
I am contemptible. . . . Yet compare my 
former life with my life of to-day. You will 
see that I am trying to live according to the 
laws of God. I have not done the thousandth 
part of what I ought to do, and I am con- 
fused; but I have failed to do it not because 



298 TOLSTOY 

I did not wish to do it, but because I could 
not. . . . Blame me, but not the path I 
am taking. If I know the road to my house, 
and if I stagger along it like a drunken man, 
does that show that the road is bad? Show 
me another, or follow me along the true path, 
as I am ready to follow you. But do not 
discourage me, do not rejoice in my distress, 
do not joyfully cry out: 'Look! He said he 
was going to the house, and he is falling into 
the ditch!' No, do not be glad, but help 
me, support me! . . . Help me! My 
heart is torn with despair lest we should all 
be astray; and when I make every effort to 
escape you, at each effort, instead of having 
compassion, point at me with your finger cry- 
ing, 'Look, he is falling into the ditch with 
us!' " 23 

When death was nearer, he wrote once 
more: 

"I am not a saint: I have never professed 
to be one. I am a man who allows himself 
to be carried away, and who often does not 

23 Letter to a friend, 1895 (the French version being 
published in Plaisirs cruels, 1895). 



OLD AGE S99 

say all that he thinks and feels; not because 
he does not want to, but because he cannot, 
because it often happens that he exaggerates 
or is mistaken. In my actions it is still worse. 
I am altogether a weak man with vicious 
habits, who wishes to serve the God of truth, 
but who is constantly stumbling. If I am 
considered as a man who cannot be mistaken, 
then each of my mistakes must appear as a 
lie or a hypocrisy. But if I am regarded as 
a weak man, I appear then what I am in 
reality: a pitiable creature, yet sincere; who 
has constantly and with all his soul desired, 
and who still desires, to become. a good man, 
a good servant of God." 

Thus he remained, tormented by remorse, 
pursued by the mute reproaches of disciples 
more energetic and less human than him- 
self; 24 tortured by his weakness and indeci- 

24 It seems that during his last few years, and especially 
during the last few months, he was influenced by Vladi- 
mir-Grigorovitch Tchertkoff, a devoted friend, who, long 
established in England, had consecrated his fortune to the 
publication and distribution of Tolstoy's complete works. 
Tchertkoff had been violently attacked by Leo, Tolstoy's 
eldest son. But although he was accused of being a re- 



300 TOLSTOY 

sion, torn between the love of his family and 
the love of God — until the day when a sudden 
fit of despair, and perhaps the fever which 
rises at the approach of death, drove him forth 
from the shelter of his house, out upon the 
roads, wandering, fleeing, knocking at the 
doors of a convent, then resuming his flight, 
and at last falling upon the way, in an ob- 
scure little village, never to rise again. 25 On 

bellious and unmanageable spirit, no one could doubt 
his absolute devotion; and without approving of the al- 
most inhuman harshness of certain actions apparently com- 
mitted under his inspiration (such as the will by which 
Tolstoy deprived his wife of all property in his writings 
without exception, including his private correspondence), 
we are forced to believe that he thought more of Tolstoy's 
fame than Tolstoy himself. 

25 The Correspondance of the Union pour la Verite 
publishes, in its issue for January I, 191 1, an interesting 
account of this flight. 

Tolstoy left Yasnaya Polyana suddenly on October 28, 
1 9 10 (November 10th European style) about five o'clock 
in the morning. He was accompanied by Dr. Makovit- 
ski; his daughter Alexandra, whom Tchertkoff calls "his 
most intimate collaborator," was in the secret. At six 
in the evening of the same day he reached the monas- 
tery of Optina, one of the most celebrated sanctuaries of 
Russia, which he had often visited in pilgrimage. He 
passed the night there; the next morning he wrote a long 



OLD AGE 301 

his death-bed he wept, not for himself, but 
for the unhappy; and he said, in the midst 
of his sobs: 

"There are millions of human beings on 
earth who are suffering: why do you think 
only of me?" 

Then it came — it was Sunday, November 
20, 1910, a little after six in the morning — 
the "deliverance," as he named it: "Death, 
blessed Death." 

article on the death penalty. On the evening of October 
29th (November nth) he went to the monastery of Cha- 
mordino, where his sister Marie was a nun. He dined 
with her, and spoke of how he would have wished to 
pass the end of his life at Optina, "performing the hum- 
blest tasks, on condition that he was not forced to go to 
church." He slept at Chamordino, and next morning 
took a walk through the neighbouring village, where he 
thought of taking a lodging; returning to his sister in 
the afternoon. At five o'clock his daughter Alexandra 
unexpectedly arrived. She doubtless told him that his re- 
treat was known, and that he was being followed; they 
left at once in the night. "Tolstoy, Alexandra, and 
Makovitski were making for the Koselk station, probably 
intending to gain the southern provinces, or perhaps the 
Doukhobor colonies in the Caucasus." On the way Tol- 
stoy fell ill at the railway-station of Astapovo and was 
forced to take to his bed. It was there that he died. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

CONCLUSION 



CHAPTER XVIII 

CONCLUSION 

The struggle was ended; the struggle that 
had lasted for eighty-two years, whose battle- 
field was this life of ours. A tragic and 
glorious melee, in which all the forces of life 
took part; all the vices and all the virtues. 
— All the vices excepting one : untruth, which 
he pursued incessantly, tracking it into its 
last resort and refuge. 

In the beginning intoxicated liberty, the 
conflict of passions in the stormy darkness, 
illuminated from time to time by dazzling 
flashes of light — crises of love and ecstasy and 
visions of the Eternal. Years of the Caucasus, 
of Sebastopol; years of tumultuous and rest- 
less youth. Then the great peace of the first 
years of marriage. The happiness of love, 
of art, of nature — War and Peace. The 
broad daylight of genius, which bathed the 
whole human horizon, and the spectacle of 

305 



306 TOLSTOY 

those struggles which for the soul of the artist 
were already things of the past. He domi- 
nated them, was master of them, and already 
they were not enough. Like Prince Andrei, 
his eyes were turned towards the vast skies 
which shone above the battlefield. It was 
this sky that attracted him: 

"There are men with powerful wings whom 
pleasure leads to alight in the midst of the 
crowd, w r hen their pinions are broken; such, 
for instance, am I. Then they beat their 
broken wings; they launch themselves des- 
perately, but fall anew. The wings will 
mend. I shall fly high. May God help 
me!" 1 

1 Journal, dated October 28, 1879. Here is the entire 
passage : 

"There are in this world heavy folk, without wings. 
They struggle down below. There are strong men 
among them: as Napoleon. He leaves terrible traces 
among humanity. He sows discord. — There are men 
who let their wings grow, slowly launch themselves, and 
hover: the monks. There are light fliers, who easily 
mount and fall: the worthy idealists. There are men 
with powerful wings. . . . There are the celestial 
ones, who out of their love of men descend to earth and 
fold their wings, and teach others how to fly. Then, 



CONCLUSION 307 

These words were written in the midst of 
a terrible spiritual tempest, of which the Con- 
fessions are the memory and echo. More 
than once was Tolstoy thrown to earth, his 
pinions shattered. But he always persevered. 
He started afresh. We see him hovering in 
"the vast, profound heavens," with his two 
great wings, of which one is reason and the 
other faith. But he does not find the peace 
he looked for. Heaven is not without us, but 
within us. Tolstoy fills it with the tempest 
of his passions. There he perceives the apos- 
tles of renunciation, and he brings to renun- 
ciation the same ardour that he brought to life. 
But it is always life that he strains to him, 
with the violence of a lover. He is "mad- 
dened with life." He is "intoxicated with 
life." He cannot live without this madness. 2 

when they are no longer needed, they re-ascend: as did 
Christ." 

2 "One can live only while one is drunken with life" 
(Confessions, 1879). "I am mad with living. . . . 
It is summer, the delicious summer. This year I have 
struggled for a long time; but the beauty of nature has 
conquered me. I rejoice in life." (Letter to Fet, July, 
1880.) These lines were written at the height of the re- 
ligious crisis. 



308 TOLSTOY 

He .is drunk at once with happiness and with 
unhappiness, with death and with immortal- 
ity. 3 His renunciation of individual life is 
only a cry of exalted passion towards the eter- 
nal life. The peace which he finds, the peace 
of the soul which he invokes, is not the peace 
of death. It is rather the calm of those burn- 
ing worlds which sail by the forces of gravity 
through the infinite spaces. With him anger 
is calm, 4 and the calm is blazing. Faith has 
given him new weapons with which to wage, 
even more implacably, unceasing war upon 
the lies of modern society. He no longer 
confines himself to a few types of romance; 
he attacks all the great idols: the hypocrisies 
of religion, the State, science, art, liberalism, 
socialism, popular education, benevolence, 

3 In his Journal, dated May I, 1863 : "The thought of 
death." ... "I desire and love immortality." 

4 "I was intoxicated with that boiling anger and indig- 
nation which I love to feel, which I excite even when I 
feel it naturally, because it acts upon me in such a way 
as to calm me, and gives me, at least for a few moments, 
an extraordinary elasticity, and the full fire and energy 
of all the physical and moral capacities." (Diary of 
Prince D. Nekhludov, Lucerne, 1857.) 



CONCLUSION 309 

pacificism. 5 He strikes at all, delivers his des- 
perate attacks upon all. 

From time to time the world has sight of 
these great rebellious spirits, who, like John 
the Forerunner, hurl anathemas against a cor- 
rupted civilisation. The last of these was 
Rousseau. By his love of nature, 6 by his 

5 His article on War, written on the occasion of the 
Universal Peace Congress in London in 1 891, is a rude 
satire on the peacemakers who believe in international ar- 
bitration : 

"This is the story of the bird which is caught after a 
pinch of salt has been put on his tail. It is quite as easy 
to catch him without it. They laugh at us who speak 
of arbitration and disarmament by consent of the Pow- 
ers. Mere verbiage, this! Naturally the Governments 
approve: worthy apostles! They know very well that 
their approval will never prevent their doing as they will." 
{Cruel Pleasures.) 

6 Nature was always "the best friend" of Tolstoy, as 
he loved to say : "A friend is good ; but he will die, or 
he will go abroad, and one cannot follow him; while Na- 
ture, to which one may be united by an act of purchase 
or by inheritance, is better. Nature to me is cold and 
exacting, repulses me and hinders me; yet Nature is a 
friend whom we keep until death, and into whom we 
shall enter when we die." (Letter to Fet, May 19, 
1 86 1. Further Letters.) He shared in the life of na- 
ture; he was born again in the spring. "March and 



310 TOLSTOY 

hatred of modern society, by his jealous in- 
dependence, by his fervent adoration of the 
Gospel and for Christian morals, Rousseau 
is a precursor of Tolstoy, who says of him: 

April are my best months for work." Towards the end 
of autumn he became more torpid. "To me it is the 
most dead of all the seasons; I do not think; I do not 
write; I feel agreeably stupid." (To Fet, October, 
1869.) But the Nature that spoke so intimately to his 
heart was that of his own home, Yasnaya Polyana. Al- 
though he wrote some very charming notes upon the Lake 
of Geneva when travelling in Switzerland, and especially 
on the Clarens district, whither the memory of Rousseau 
attracted him, he felt himself a stranger amid the Swiss 
landscape; and the ties of his native land appeared more 
closely drawn and sweeter: "I love Nature when she 
surrounds me on every side, when on every hand the 
warm air envelopes me which extends through the infinite 
distance; when the very same lush grasses that I have 
crushed in throwing myself on the ground make the ver- 
dure of the infinite meadows; when the same leaves 
which, shaken by the wind, throw the shadow on my 
face, make the sombre blue of the distant forest; when the 
very air I breathe makes the light-blue background of the 
infinite sky; when not I alone am delighting in nature; 
when around me whirl and hum millions of insects and 
the birds are singing. The greatest delight in nature is 
when I feel myself making a part of all. Here (in 
Switzerland) the infinite distance is beautiful, but I have 
nothing in common with it." (May, 185 1.) 



CONCLUSION 311 

"Pages like this go to my heart; I feel that 
I should have written them." 7 

But what a difference between the two 
minds, and how much more purely Christian 
is Tolstoy's! What a lack of humility, what 

7 Conversations with M. Paul Boyer (Le Temps, Au- 
gust 28, 1901). 

The similarity is really very striking at times, and 
might well deceive one. Take the profession of faith of 
the dying Julie : 

"I could not say that I believed what it was impossible 
for me to believe, and I have always believed what I said 
I believed. This was as much as rested with me." 

Compare Tolstoy's letter to the Holy Synod: 

"It may be that my beliefs are embarrassing or dis- 
pleasing. It is not within my power to change them, 
just as it is not in my power to change my body. I can- 
not believe anything but what I believe, at this hour 
when I am preparing to return to that God from whom I 
came." 

Or this passage from the Reponse a Christophe de 
Beaumont, which seems pure Tolstoy: 

"I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. My Master has told 
me that he who loves his brother accomplishes the law." 

Or again: 

"The whole of the Lord's Prayer is expressed in these 
words: 'Thy Will be done!' ' : (Troisieme lettre de la 
Montague.) 

Compare with: 

"I am replacing all my prayers with the Pater Noster. 



312 TOLSTOY 

Pharisee-like arrogance, in this insolent cry 
from the Confessions of the Genevese: 

"Eternal Being! Let a single man tell me, 
if he dare: I was better than that man!" 

Or in this defiance of the world: 

"I say it loudly and fearlessly: whosoever 
could believe me a dishonest man is himself a 
man to be suppressed." 

Tolstoy wept tears of blood over the 
"crimes" of his past life: 

"I suffer the pangs of hell. I recall all my 
past baseness, and these memories do not leave 

All the requests I can make of God are expressed with 
greater moral elevation by these words: 'Thy Will be 
done!'" (Tolstoy's Journal, in the Caucasus, 1852-3.) 

The similarity of thought is no less striking in the 
province of art: 

"The first rule of the art of writing," said Rousseau, 
"is to speak plainly and to express one's thought ex- 
actly." 

And Tolstoy: 

"Think what you will, but in such a manner that every 
word may be understood by all. One cannot write any- 
thing bad in perfectly plain language." 

I have demonstrated elsewhere that the satirical de- 
scriptions of the Paris Opera in the Nouvelle Heloise 
have much in common with Tolstoy's criticisms in What 
is Art? 



CONCLUSION 313 

me ; they poison my life. Usually men regret 
that they cannot remember after death. 
What happiness if it should be so! What 
suffering it would mean if, in that other life, 
I were to recall all the evil I have done down 
here!" 8 

Tolstoy was not the man to write his con- 
fessions, as did Rousseau, because, as the latter 
said, "feeling that the good exceeded the evil 
it was in my interest to tell everything." 9 
Tolstoy, after having made the attempt, de- 
cided not to write his Memoirs; the pen fell 
from his hands ; he did not wish to be an ob- 
ject of offence and scandal to those who would 
read it. 

"People would say : There, then, is the man 
whom many set so high! And what a shame- 
ful fellow he was! Then with us mere mor- 
tals it is God who ordains us to be shame- 
ful." 10 

Never did Rousseau know the Christian 
faith, the fine modesty, and the humility that 

8 Journal, January 6, 1903. 

9 Quatrieme Promenade. 
10 Letter to Birukov. 



314 TOLSTOY 

produced the ineffable candour of the aged 
Tolstoy. Behind Rousseau we see the Rome 
of Calvin. In Tolstoy we see the pilgrims, 
the innocents, whose tears and na'ive confes- 
sions had touched him as a child. 

But beyond and above the struggle with 
the world, which was common to him and 
to Rousseau, another kind of warfare filled 
the last thirty years of Tolstoy's life ; a magnif- 
icent warfare between the highest powers of 
his mind: Truth and Love. 

Truth — "that look which goes straight to 
the heart/' the penetrating light of "those grey 
eyes which pierce you through" — Truth was 
his earliest faith, and the empress of his art. 

"The heroine of my writings, she whom I 
love with all the forces of my being, she who 
always was, is, and will be beautiful, is 
Truth." " 

The truth alone escaped shipwreck after the 
death of his brother. 12 The truth, the pivot 

11 Sebastopol in May, 1853. 

12 "The truth. ... the only thing that has been 
left me of my moral conceptions, the sole thing that I 
shall still fulfil." (October 17, i860.) 



CONCLUSION 315 

of his life, the rock in the midst of an 
ocean. 

But very soon the "horrible truth" 13 was 
no longer enough for him. Love had sup- 
planted it. It was the living spring of his 
childhood; "the natural state of his soul." 14 
When the moral crisis of 1880 came he never 
relinquished the truth; he made way for 
love. 15 

Love is "the basis of energy." 16 Love is 
the "reason of life"; the only reason, with 
beauty." 17 Love is the essence of Tolstoy 
ripened by life, of the author of War and 
Peace and the Letter to the Holy Synod. 19, 

"October 17, i860. 

14 "The love of men is the natural state of the soul, 
and we do not observe it." {Journal, while he was stu- 
dent at Kazan.) 

15 'The truth will make way for love." (Confes- 
sions.) 

16 « <You are always talking of energy ? But the basis 
of energy is love,' said Anna, 'and love does not come at 
will.'" (Anna Karenin.) 

17 "Beauty and love, those two sole reasons for human 
existence." (War and Peace.) 

18 "I believe in God, who for me is Love." ( To the 
Holy Synod, 1 90 1.) 



31G TOLSTOY 

This interpenetration of the truth by love 
makes the unique value of the masterpieces 
he wrote in the middle part of his life — nel 
mezzo del cammin — and distinguishes his 
realism from the realism of Flaubert. The 
latter places his faith in refraining from lov- 
ing his characters. Great as he may be, he 
lacks the Fiat lux! The light of the sun is 
not enough: we must have the light of the 
heart. The realism of Tolstoy is incarnate 
in each of his creatures, and seeing them with 
their own eyes he finds in the vilest reasons for 
loving them and for making us feel the chain 
of brotherhood which unites us to all. 19 By 
love he penetrates to the roots of life. 

But this union is a difficult one to main- 

" 'Yes, love ! . . . Not selfish love, but love as I 
knew it, for the first time in my life, when I saw my 
enemy dying at my side, and loved him. . . . It is 
the very essence of the soul. To love his neighbour, to 
love his enemies, to love all and each, is to love God in 
all His manifestations! . . . To love a creature who 
is dear to us is human love: to love an enemy is almost 
divine love!' " (Prince Andrei in War and Peace.) 

19 "The passionate love of the artist for his subject is 
the soul of art. Without love no work of art is possi- 
ble." (Letter of September, 1889.) 



CONCLUSION 317 

tain. There are hours in which the spectacle 
of life and its suffering are so bitter that they 
appear an affront to love, and in order to save 
it, and to save his faith, a man must withdraw 
to such a height above the world that faith 
is in danger of losing truth as well. What 
shall he do, moreover, who has received at 
the hands of fate the fatal, magnificent gift 
of seeing the truth — the gift of being unable 
to escape from seeing it? Who shall say what 
Tolstoy suffered from the continual discord 
of his latter years — the discord between his 
unpitying vision, which saw the horror of 
reality, and his impassioned heart, which con- 
tinued to expect love and to affirm it? 

We have all known these tragic conflicts. 
How often have we had to face the alter- 
native — not to see, or to hate ! And how often 
does an artist — an artist worthy of the name, 
a writer who knows the terrible, magnificent 
power of the written word — feel himself 
weighed down by anguish as he writes the 
truth! 20 This truth, sane and virile, neces- 
sary in the midst of modern lies, this vital 

20 " I write books, which is why I know all the evil they 



318 TOLSTOY 

truth seems to him as the air we breathe. 
. . . But then we perceive that this air is 
more than the lungs of many can bear. It 
is too strong for the many beings enfeebled 
by civilisation; too strong for those who are 
weak simply in the kindness of their hearts. 
Are we to take no account of this, and plunge 
them implacably into the truth that kills 
them? Is there not above all a truth which, 
as Tolstoy says, "is open to love"? Or is the 
artist to soothe mankind with consoling lies, 
as Peer Gynt, with his tales, soothes his old 
dying mother? Society is always face to face 
with this dilemma; the truth, or love. It re- 
solves it in general by sacrificing both. 

Tolstoy has never betrayed either of his two 
faiths. In the works of his maturity love is 
the torch of truth. In the works of his later 
years it is a light shining on high, a ray of 
mercy which falls upon life, but does not 
mingle with it. We have seen this in Resur- 
rection, wherein faith dominates the reality, 
but remains external to it. The people, 

do." . . . (Letter to P. V. Veriguin, leader of the 
Doukhobors, 1898. Further Letters.) 



CONCLUSION 319 

whom Tolstoy depicts as commonplace and 
mean when he regards the isolated figures that 
compose it, takes on a divine sanctity so soon 
as he considers it in the abstract. 21 

In his everyday life appears the same dis- 
cord as in his art, but the contrast is even 
more cruel. It was in vain that he knew what 
love required of him; he acted otherwise; he 
lived not according to God but according to 
the world. And love itself: how was he to 
behave with regard to love? How distin- 
guish betweea its many aspects, its con- 
tradictory orders? Was love of family to 
come first, or love of all humanity? To his 
last day he was perplexed by these alter- 
natives. 

What was the solution? He did not find 
it. Let us leave the self-sufficient, the coldly 
intellectual, to judge him with disdain. 

21 See A Russian Proprietor, or see in Confessions, the 
strongly idealised view of these men, simple, good, con- 
tent with their lot, living serenely and having the sense 
of life: or, at the end of the second part of Resurrection, 
that vision "of a new humanity, a new world," which ap- 
peared to Nekhludov when he met the workers return- 
ing from their toil. 



320 TOLSTOY 

They, to be sure, have found the truth; they 
hold it with assurance. For them, Tolstoy 
was a sentimentalist, a weakling, who could 
only be of use as a warning. Certainly he is 
not an example that they can follow: they 
are not sufficiently alive. Tolstoy did not be- 
long to the self-satisfied elect; he was of no 
Church; of no sect; he was no more a Scribe, 
to borrow his terms, than a Pharisee of this 
faith or that. He was the highest type of 
the free Christian, who strives all his life long 
towards an ideal that is always more re- 
mote. 22 

Tolstoy does not speak to the privileged, 
the enfranchised of the world of thought; he 
speaks to ordinary men — hominibus bonae 
voluntatis. He is our conscience. He says 
what we all think, we average people, and 

22 "A Christian should not think whether he is morally- 
superior or inferior to others; but he is the better Chris- 
tian as he travels more rapidly along the road to perfec- 
tion, whatever may be his position upon it at any 
particular moment. Thus the stationary virtue of the 
Pharisee is less Christian than that of the thief, whose 
soul is moving rapidly towards the ideal, and who re- 
pents upon his cross." {Cruel Pleasures.) 



CONCLUSION S21 

what we all fear to read in ourselves. He 
is not a master full of pride: one of those 
haughty geniuses who are throned above hu- 
manity upon their art and their intelligence. 
He is — as he loved to style himself in his 
letters, by that most beautiful of titles, the 
most pleasant of all — "our brother." 



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